Measurement Error, Legalized Abortion, and the Decline in Crime: A Response to Foote and Goetz (2005)

John Donohue and Steven Levitt

No 11987, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Donohue and Levitt (2001) argue that the legalization of abortion in the United States in the 1970s played an important role in explaining the observed decline in crime approximately two decades later. Foote and Goetz (2005) challenge the results presented in one of the tables in that original paper. In this reply, we regretfully acknowledge the omission of state-year interactions in the published version of that table, but show that their inclusion does not alter the qualitative results (or their statistical significance), although it does reduce the magnitude of the estimates. When one uses a more carefully constructed measure of abortion (e.g. one that takes into account cross-state mobility, or doing a better job of matching dates of birth to abortion exposure), however, the evidence in support of the abortion-crime hypothesis is as strong or stronger than suggested in our original work.

JEL-codes: K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-reg
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Published as Donohue, John J. and Steven D. Levitt. "Measurement Error, Legalized Abortion, and the Decline in Crime: A Response to Foote and Goetz." Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, 1 (2008): 425-440.

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