Freakonomics suffers from my knowing that one of their cases is wrong. It's the "abortion prevents crime" which suffers from the fact that you can commit crime your entire life but can only be aborted in a nine month window. It argues from the general crime rate, whereas what you should look at is the crime rate by cohort.
Unfortunately for their argument, juvenile crime exploded in the culled cohorts; the big decline was driven first by the older cohorts who weren't affected, and then by the younger cohorts being locked in prison.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2016-03-21 11:40 pm (UTC)Unfortunately for their argument, juvenile crime exploded in the culled cohorts; the big decline was driven first by the older cohorts who weren't affected, and then by the younger cohorts being locked in prison.