Hild Longitudinal Study

Amanda and Erica’s grades may differ for a variety of reasons. Studies show that the more academic activities a parent is involved in is significantly associated with their child having higher literacy achievement, lower rates of grade retention, and fewer years needing special education (Miedel & Reynolds, 2000). Amanda’s father’s income, education, and occupation also all correlate with her literacy abilities (Buckingham, Wheldall, & Beaman-Wheldall, 2013). Parental education has the strongest influence of the three (Buckingham, Wheldall, & Beaman-Wheldall, 2013).

Could it be that the government’s intervention by legalizing abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision lead to the dramatic reduction in crime? Did the government inadvertently save my life by preventing the birth of criminals? This paper will first explore the generally

In chapter 4 we revisit the authors’ argument that, when Roe V. Wade legalized abortion in 1973 many pregnancies were terminated in the U.S. that would otherwise have led to the birth of “unwanted children”. These children, born under less than ideal circumstances, would have been more likely to commit crimes when grown. Therefore, removing them pre-emptively from the population led to our lowered crime rates. One of the most controversial points of discussion in the book , first presented in the introductory chapter, is reintroduced slowly and by way of Romania.

Roe v Wade has had a major effect on fertility rates in the United States. The Supreme Court issued Roe v Wade in 1973. Before it was issued, America was going against abortion. “In the late 1960’s, a number of states tried to pass reforms that would have turned their restrictive abortion laws into, essentially, abortion-on-demand” (Last, 59). These attempts to make abortion available failed across the U.S. It is shown that there were few amounts of abortions before Roe. When the court ruled on Roe, the number of reported abortions had risen to 744,600. Over the span of 15 years, the number of abortions had risen by 100 percent. One decade after Roe, there was 34.19 million children that were born and 13.62 million were aborted.

One of the main reasons behind the drop in crime rates was the legalization of birth control laws. When children are born without a mother, a caring family, and a decent place to live in, their chances of becoming a criminal increase due to the lack of love and care during their early childhood years. Levitt and Dubner stated that “Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crimes; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime” (Levitt, 139). In order to test this theory to prove whether or not legalizing abortion would decrease the crime rates, some states had to act as early-legalizing states that supported the legalization of abortion. “Between 1988 and 1994, violent crime in the early-legalizing states fell 13 percent compared to the other states; between 1994 and 1997, their murder rates fell 23 percent more than those of other states” (Levitt, 140). Once the few early-legalizing states took action and legalized abortion laws, the crime rates began to plummet. From my perspective, because of Levitt and Dubner’s extensive use of facts and statistics to support the reasoning behind the disappearance of criminals, they were able to

After abortion was legalized in 1973, following the Roe v. Wade case, crime rates dropped

When it comes to sensitive topics, there are few that draw on people’s emotions as much as abortion. Why it this so? It is the nature of the topic. Abortion is a topic in which people’s views are just as diverse as the population itself. Most people avoid writing about such topics altogether, especially when they are in support of such an act. However when economist Steven D. Levitt and writer Stephen J Dubner wrote chapter 4 of “Freakonomics” titled “Where have all the Criminals Gone?” they did just that. The chapter details historical examples of bans on abortion, possible reasons for the sharp decline in crime in the US, and a strong final argument for why abortion is the reason the crime rate dropped so suddenly. The emotionally

Tietze used New York City as a basis for his study and the data he used was based off of estimates for the first two years after abortion was legalized (Tietze, 1975). “According to the author’s estimate, about 70 percent of the legal abortions (50,000 per year) obtained by New York City residents during the first two years under the new law replaced illegal procedures” (Tietze, 1975, p. 123). The estimate implies that the total number of induced abortions, legal and illegal, increased about 40 percent (Tietze, 1975). The number of live births in New York City declined by 25 percent and, Tietze’s (1975) study estimated the increased number of legal abortions were responsible for about half of the decline in births.

This article has a few strengths and weaknesses of it. I believe that the article does a good job at providing evidence and good sources of information. “But University of Chicago sociologist Susan E. Mayer has found otherwise. In her book What Money Can’t Buy, she examined the connection between parental incomes and child outcomes” ( Lindsey 342). A weakness that the paper has is the fact that I do not feel the author ended the article in a strong enough way to be effective to readers.

The authors raise the importance of using scientific methods of inquiry in non-scientific fields in drawing valid conclusions. This is exemplified by the negligible influence that actions taken by parents have on children's' academic outcomes. Utilizing data from the U.S. Department of Education, the authors examined the correlative relationship between a child's academic success and a plethora of variables related to the child's life; race and economic status of the parents, birth weight, and hours of television watched, to name a few. The authors concluded that the variables most directly correlated with academic success were what the parents were, such as how intelligent they were, and less what the parents did, like reading to children. This conflicts with what normative reasoning would argue: of course parenting should affect a child's outcome. However, the authors used regression analysis, which artificially holds constant every variable except the two they wished to focus on, and it displayed a different story. This illustrates the difference between the analyzing the world as it is and analyzing it with previously held notions of how it should

Abortion is one of those topics that most people feel very strongly about, and it’s also something that not a lot of people enjoy talking about. Under the communist rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, abortion was illegal in Romania. The import of contraceptives was halted as well because Ceausescu believed that increasing the number of babies born in Romania during his rule meant more Socialist citizens. While this was true, abortion did not become obsolete during his regime. In fact, abortions were still performed at alarming rates. When the Soviet Union fell and Ceausescu was no longer in power, abortion and contraception use were legalized. Despite the increase in availability, legalization of abortion and contraceptives after the fall of Ceausescu in post-socialist Romania has not resulted in a change of the abortion culture. This is because of the lack of sex education, misconceptions about contraception, and a poor economy. In order to understand this, a basic understanding of socialism is necessary, as is general knowledge of the history of Romania and the Soviet Union.

Ever since Freakonomics was published, and sold, which it sold very well to be honest, there has been many debates about one theory that Steven D. Levitt used to explain why the crime rate dropped in the 1990’s. That theory is that the Supreme Court case of Roe V Wade, which legalized abortion in all fifty states. Steven Levitt stated in Freakonomics that the legalization of abortion had the biggest percentage of why the crime rate went down. Yet, I would like to question this theory myself.

And to further develop upon this point, it is statistically proven that many unwanted babies do not have great lives. Obviously if a parent wants to get rid of the child, the parent is not going to be loving and nurturing towards the child. This leads to a slew of new children, oftentimes who are abused, without proper households to be raised in, which consequently has a wide impact across society. It has been statistically proven that most criminals come from homes that are destructive/ non-existent. Also, take a look at the increasing number of foster homes and orphanages that are being built in order to accommodate the growing number of children that cannot or will not be cared for. There are approximately over 500,000 children residing in foster care in the U.S. alone; these children lack the support and care that a regular family would provide. If abortions were to become illegal, the number of homeless children would exponentially increase from the already staggering number of children.

School children present many advantages as a target segment. The first being that 87% of parents supply an income to children (Calvert, 2008) .This means

This trend, which is occurring in developing and as well as developed countries, has continued to the present, as abortion laws have been relaxed in five more countries within the past four years- Greece, Portugal, Spain, Taiwan and Turkey. During the same period, women's access to legal abortion has been significantly reduced only in Romania (in 1984). That nation's population policy also restricts the availability of modern contraceptive methods and authorizes the investigation of all women who experience miscarriages. In addition, the Irish constitution was amended in 1985 to prevent any future liberalization of its highly restrictive abortion law.