> When lead was removed from gasoline, lead levels in the environment fell, and kids avoided the lead exposure that caused these developmental problems. About 20 years later, when those kids became young adults, crime rates fell. This, proponents say, is what explains the mysterious and persistent decline in crime beginning in the early 1990s.
> It’s an intriguing idea — particularly since we don’t have a better explanation for the big changes in crime rates during this period.
Did not freakanomics come up with a famous (and to me more convincing) argument that it legalized abortion was the reason for the drop in crime? At they very least it dispels the arguments we don't have a better explanation and doesn't even mention it.
One of the interesting things about social science observations is there's a lot of noise.
Both the lead and the abortion hypotheses could be true. In fact they could both be true AND the papers indicating one explanation could conceivably throw out the other explanation. If you're interested in one hypothesis, you might not spend the time going through alternatives as thoroughly as someone investigating the other.
Looking specifically, the studies are always trying to isolate some effect, often using some sort of clever control derived from the proposed mechanism. So in this case there's a paper that points out how lead only goes into the water if the water is acidic, and they look at places with non-acidic water or non-lead pipes to control. For abortion, it's been a while since I read it, but there would be something along the lines of when abortion became widespread in a given community. You'd then look at differences in frequency and think about whether that came out in the crime stats when the kids got older.
The rabbit hole is where you can come up with ever more interesting corollaries and data that support or do not support some hypothesis. You see this across the social sciences all the time. There's also confounding problems, say you know people tend to move to the city when they grow up (I don't know if this is true), then how valid is your birth -> crime data?
Here's a load of random observations I thought up:
- If abortion is the key, why do crime rates keep falling? Why is it not a step effect?
- If it's lead, did crime rates increase 20 years after leaded fuel became a thing?
- What if it's abortion AND lead? There are countries where abortion and lead are timed differently, how about looking at them?
- What if it's neither, but both are caused by some other thing? Say economic development -> both?
The abortion hypothesis is a different explanation, but it's not necessarily a better one. The proposed mechanism for abortion is that mothers who will give birth to future criminals are more likely to get abortions than mothers who will not give birth to future criminals, which seems vaguely plausible, but it's a more indirect effect than the known effects of lead exposure on brain development.
The lead mechanism is also easier to validate. Simply correlating the drop in crime with Roe v. Wade plus 20 years isn't enough--you also have to show some evidence which mothers and families demographically tend to produce more criminal children, and that these same mothers and families disproportionately chose abortion in greater rates after Roe v. Wade.
> Did not freakanomics come up with a famous (and to me more convincing) argument that it legalized abortion was the reason for the drop in crime? At they very least it dispels the arguments we don't have a better explanation and doesn't even mention it.
A wide variety of factors contributed to the decline in crime. The world is complicated. The interesting thing about the lead theory is that research has found effects far larger than anyone would have expected intuitively.
The abortion theory makes intuitive sense, but as far as I know it hasn't been studied as rigorously.
Kevin Drum discusses this in his piece that popularized the lead-crime hypothesis in 2016[1]. Some of the research[2] into the lead-crime hypothesis was inspired by the abortion-crime hypothesis.
> Did not freakanomics come up with a famous (and to me more convincing) argument that it legalized abortion was the reason for the drop in crime? At they very least it dispels the arguments we don't have a better explanation and doesn't even mention it.
It isn't a better one than lead. It was one of many correlated events. It was an interesting theory when it came out, but I don't think anyone takes the abortion argument seriously today since both abortion rates and crime rates have fallen together for nearly 40 years. Even when freakonomics came out, I remember my economics professor saying it was used to sell books.
Also, if the freakonomics theory was valid, the legalization and widespread use of birth control ( which prevented far more pregnancies and births ), not abortion, should be getting the credit. You are comparing an ocean ( birth control ) with a small pond ( abortion ).
The abortion theory is pretty much debunked now. That's why you don't hear about it anymore.
It's most likely a confluence of events that has led to drop in crime rates. Birth control, less lead, more TV/internet/etc, longer education period and changes in the law or prosecutions. At the end of the day, nobody really knows what caused the decline in crime for certain. Abortion sells a lot of books and gets a lot of media support/press, but the continuing decline of both abortion rates and crime rates seems to indicate that abortion isn't the cause.
Russia/Former Soviet Union is an interesting outlier, because abortion has been legal there since at least the 1920s(with an almost 20-year gap imposed by Stalin).
We actually have dozens of competing explanations for the crime rate decreases. Everyone and their uncle claims it's because of that thing they talked about all along!
Which is why it's important to look at actual data and try to keep an open mind. This stuff is complicated!
One of the most dangerous forms of lead is Tetraethyllead, because of how fat soluble it is. It's been banned in nearly every country in the world because it moves through the environment at an alarming rate. One company in the world still manufactures it, and they're based in the UK[0].
They're entirely aware that they're killing people and have openly said in management meetings that they won't stop manufacturing the product until government regulation forces them to.
Mind you, lead levels don't only increase in the country the chemical is used; it moves through entire ecosystems and across oceans. Lead levels don't fall to below dangerous levels for decades. This isn't just poisoning the people nearby; it's poisoning the entire world in small, insidious ways. And chemical companies are profiting from that. The margin they're selling TEL for would make government contractors cry.
And to top it off, they have virtually no quality program surrounding their products because they don't need one; all of their deals are done with backroom handshakes and agreeing to take the blame if an issue arises. Their company is built around the idea that it actually costs less to just say "Yeah, we're terrible people, fine us" than to actually try and comply with government regulation. They've repeatedly been caught in corruption and environmental probes, and have changed their names in the states and in the UK multiple times. They were literally caught trying to bribe their way into selling TEL in Iran. [1]
A was very skeptical when I saw the headline. Then I read the article. The evidence coming from these 3 studies looks quite compelling I have to say. Next I googled: “Countries That Still Use Leaded Gasoline”, and I got:
Rank Location
1 Algeria
2 Iraq
3 Yemen
4 Myanmar
5 North Korea
6 Afghanistan
> Rank Location 1 Algeria 2 Iraq 3 Yemen 4 Myanmar 5 North Korea 6 Afghanistan
I am hoping you are not attributing violence and instability in some of these countries to lead based gasoline. Sure, there may be correlation, but these places are centuries old. There are many factors like culture, religiosity, socio-economic status , history, contemporary culture, so on and so forth.
I don't know how much of a well know fact this is here, but lead pipes influence over brain and behaviour has long been considered a possible factor among the ones that caused the fall of the Roman empire.
The effect of lead residuals on brain is pretty well known..
I'd think you'd also need to see the rate of leaded gas burning per area. Fewer people drive cars in some of those countries, and there are fewer cars per square area.
I was going to ask why the cited studies apparently didn't consider the phaseout of lead-based paint. But then I realized that the first study relies on data preceding the lead-paint problem, in that lead paint wasn't used as much indoors then, and arguably wasn't in bad shape. The third study just considers lead levels and interventions, and so subjects were exposed to multiple sources.
The second study[0] finds that distance to roads correlates with lead exposure. They do discuss relative contribution from multiple sources: flaking indoor lead-based paint, lead in soil around foundations (from maintenance of outdoor lead-based paint), and roadside lead.
I may have missed something but it looks like Europe is not taken into consideration in these studies. For example in France lead in gasoline was not banned until the 90’s, and the violent crime statistics doesn’t look very correlated.
Does anyone have any resources with concrete numbers about how much lead exposure is too much? I just moved into a new house that has a lead service pipe in from the city, and it concerns me. In addition, the federal action level is 15ppb, and my utility's water report last year had it at 8ppb, which seems kind of close.
I know there's no known level of safe lead exposure, but I don't have a good sense from a cost benefit perspective of how much to do to try to lower my exposure.
Water filters are cheap and effective and make the water taste better anyway. I think most people's exposure is from eating lead paint and breathing fumes and particulates (also from paint -previously from gasoline engines). None the less, the US is visibly decaying enough I always drink filtered water (google "big berkey").
Without wanting to sound too snarky, wasn't this already pretty well-established knowledge? [0]
Imho one of the more infamous and recent examples of human hubris. Who knows what we are downplaying right now, that might end up really messing us up in another couple of decades? Only time will tell.
I thought so, and I wish it were. But look at the threads here, and everyone who feels that they can just say "crack epidemic" and believe it is providing the same insight into the situation as scientific study.
In Elizabethan England, didn’t a lot of women wear lead based makeup? I’d be interested in seeing how that affected crime rates or other metrics, if that data were available.
Could it be that there are other pollutants that could cause similar issues?
Some countries have banned lead even before the US, but crime rates are still growing(Brazil, for instance). Poverty alone does not explain this. There are countries just as poor (or more), with corrupt police forces and that do not have the same issue with violence.
[+] [-] dalore|7 years ago|reply
> It’s an intriguing idea — particularly since we don’t have a better explanation for the big changes in crime rates during this period.
Did not freakanomics come up with a famous (and to me more convincing) argument that it legalized abortion was the reason for the drop in crime? At they very least it dispels the arguments we don't have a better explanation and doesn't even mention it.
http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-sh...
[+] [-] lordnacho|7 years ago|reply
Both the lead and the abortion hypotheses could be true. In fact they could both be true AND the papers indicating one explanation could conceivably throw out the other explanation. If you're interested in one hypothesis, you might not spend the time going through alternatives as thoroughly as someone investigating the other.
Looking specifically, the studies are always trying to isolate some effect, often using some sort of clever control derived from the proposed mechanism. So in this case there's a paper that points out how lead only goes into the water if the water is acidic, and they look at places with non-acidic water or non-lead pipes to control. For abortion, it's been a while since I read it, but there would be something along the lines of when abortion became widespread in a given community. You'd then look at differences in frequency and think about whether that came out in the crime stats when the kids got older.
The rabbit hole is where you can come up with ever more interesting corollaries and data that support or do not support some hypothesis. You see this across the social sciences all the time. There's also confounding problems, say you know people tend to move to the city when they grow up (I don't know if this is true), then how valid is your birth -> crime data?
Here's a load of random observations I thought up:
- If abortion is the key, why do crime rates keep falling? Why is it not a step effect?
- If it's lead, did crime rates increase 20 years after leaded fuel became a thing?
- What if it's abortion AND lead? There are countries where abortion and lead are timed differently, how about looking at them?
- What if it's neither, but both are caused by some other thing? Say economic development -> both?
[+] [-] philwelch|7 years ago|reply
The lead mechanism is also easier to validate. Simply correlating the drop in crime with Roe v. Wade plus 20 years isn't enough--you also have to show some evidence which mothers and families demographically tend to produce more criminal children, and that these same mothers and families disproportionately chose abortion in greater rates after Roe v. Wade.
[+] [-] GIFtheory|7 years ago|reply
There was a bug in Donohue and Levitt's code which, combined with other factors, makes the effect go away, supposedly: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2005/12/01/o...
[+] [-] thelibrarian|7 years ago|reply
- why did the crime rates simultaneously drop in states where abortion was already legal before Roe v Wade?
- why did crime rates have a similar drop in similar time frames in other countries regardless of the legality of abortion?
There is a very strong correlation between the banning of leaded petrol and reduction in crime rates around the world.
[+] [-] noelsusman|7 years ago|reply
The abortion theory makes intuitive sense, but as far as I know it hasn't been studied as rigorously.
[+] [-] meej|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
[2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097
[+] [-] liftbigweights|7 years ago|reply
It isn't a better one than lead. It was one of many correlated events. It was an interesting theory when it came out, but I don't think anyone takes the abortion argument seriously today since both abortion rates and crime rates have fallen together for nearly 40 years. Even when freakonomics came out, I remember my economics professor saying it was used to sell books.
Also, if the freakonomics theory was valid, the legalization and widespread use of birth control ( which prevented far more pregnancies and births ), not abortion, should be getting the credit. You are comparing an ocean ( birth control ) with a small pond ( abortion ).
The abortion theory is pretty much debunked now. That's why you don't hear about it anymore.
It's most likely a confluence of events that has led to drop in crime rates. Birth control, less lead, more TV/internet/etc, longer education period and changes in the law or prosecutions. At the end of the day, nobody really knows what caused the decline in crime for certain. Abortion sells a lot of books and gets a lot of media support/press, but the continuing decline of both abortion rates and crime rates seems to indicate that abortion isn't the cause.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] int_19h|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkcontext|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tade0|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Camillo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yters|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opportune|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BurningFrog|7 years ago|reply
Which is why it's important to look at actual data and try to keep an open mind. This stuff is complicated!
[+] [-] Biologist123|7 years ago|reply
http://latinalista.com/columns/globalviews/nearly-half-mexic...
[+] [-] galaxyLogic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sileni|7 years ago|reply
They're entirely aware that they're killing people and have openly said in management meetings that they won't stop manufacturing the product until government regulation forces them to.
Mind you, lead levels don't only increase in the country the chemical is used; it moves through entire ecosystems and across oceans. Lead levels don't fall to below dangerous levels for decades. This isn't just poisoning the people nearby; it's poisoning the entire world in small, insidious ways. And chemical companies are profiting from that. The margin they're selling TEL for would make government contractors cry.
And to top it off, they have virtually no quality program surrounding their products because they don't need one; all of their deals are done with backroom handshakes and agreeing to take the blame if an issue arises. Their company is built around the idea that it actually costs less to just say "Yeah, we're terrible people, fine us" than to actually try and comply with government regulation. They've repeatedly been caught in corruption and environmental probes, and have changed their names in the states and in the UK multiple times. They were literally caught trying to bribe their way into selling TEL in Iran. [1]
[0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/leaded-petrol-alge...
[1]: https://www.sfo.gov.uk/2014/08/04/four-sentenced-role-innosp...
[1]: https://www.sfo.gov.uk/cases/innospec-ltd/
[+] [-] refurb|7 years ago|reply
Article is pretty low quality.
[+] [-] _ea1k|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jxub|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amiraliakbari|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somebodythere|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baxtr|7 years ago|reply
Rank Location 1 Algeria 2 Iraq 3 Yemen 4 Myanmar 5 North Korea 6 Afghanistan
From https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-that-still-use...
Also I found this: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/prediction-te...
Very interesting indeed.
[+] [-] phakding|7 years ago|reply
I am hoping you are not attributing violence and instability in some of these countries to lead based gasoline. Sure, there may be correlation, but these places are centuries old. There are many factors like culture, religiosity, socio-economic status , history, contemporary culture, so on and so forth.
[+] [-] Micoloth|7 years ago|reply
The effect of lead residuals on brain is pretty well known..
[+] [-] fiter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makosdv|7 years ago|reply
"Lead exposure in childhood linked to lower IQ, lower status jobs, as adults" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170328145300.h... Which also correlates with criminality.
[+] [-] mirimir|7 years ago|reply
The second study[0] finds that distance to roads correlates with lead exposure. They do discuss relative contribution from multiple sources: flaking indoor lead-based paint, lead in soil around foundations (from maintenance of outdoor lead-based paint), and roadside lead.
0) https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nber.org/papers/w23392
[+] [-] kurthr|7 years ago|reply
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/lead-in-us-school-wa...
[+] [-] krrrh|7 years ago|reply
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
[+] [-] 0x17A|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tarsinge|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losvedir|7 years ago|reply
I know there's no known level of safe lead exposure, but I don't have a good sense from a cost benefit perspective of how much to do to try to lower my exposure.
[+] [-] scottlocklin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisbrandow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freeflight|7 years ago|reply
Imho one of the more infamous and recent examples of human hubris. Who knows what we are downplaying right now, that might end up really messing us up in another couple of decades? Only time will tell.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Controversy_and...
[+] [-] sutterbomb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] int_19h|7 years ago|reply
It's the correlation with crime specifically that is the interesting part.
[+] [-] rejectedalot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] outworlder|7 years ago|reply
Some countries have banned lead even before the US, but crime rates are still growing(Brazil, for instance). Poverty alone does not explain this. There are countries just as poor (or more), with corrupt police forces and that do not have the same issue with violence.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corysama|7 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/27/air-poll...
[+] [-] int_19h|7 years ago|reply
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/08/murder-sao-pa...
[+] [-] jandrese|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] williesleg|7 years ago|reply
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