The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime

John Donohue and Steven Levitt

Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics

Abstract: We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly 18 years after abortion legalization. The 5 states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime.

Date: 2000-03-01
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/00p599hk.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (2001)
Working Paper: The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:oplwec:qt00p599hk

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().