THEQUARTERLY JOURNAL
OF ECONOMICS
Vol. CXVIMay 2001

Issue 2

THE IMPACT OF LEGALIZED ABORTION ON CRIME*JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITTWe offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed signicantly torecent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion
legalization. The ve 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.

I. INTRODUCTION
Since 1991, the United States has experienced the sharpest
drop in murder rates since the end of Prohibition in 1933. Homicide rates have fallen more than 40 percent. Violent crime andproperty crime have each declined more than 30 percent. Hundreds of articles discussing this change have appeared in theacademic literature and popular press.1 They have offered anarray of explanations: the increasing use of incarceration, growth* We would like to thank Ian Ayres, Gary Becker, Carl Bell, Alfred Blumstein,
Jonathan Caulkins, Richard Craswell, George Fisher, Richard Freeman, James
Heckman, Christine Jolls, Theodore Joyce, Louis Kaplow, Lawrence Katz, John
Kennan, John Monahan, Casey Mulligan, Derek Neal, Eric Posner, Richard
Posner, Sherwin Rosen, Steve Sailer, José Scheinkman, Peter Siegelman, Kenji
Yoshino, and seminar participants too numerous to mention for helpful comments
and discussions. Craig Estes and Rose Francis provided exceptionally valuable
research assistance. Correspondence can be addressed to either John Donohue,
Crown Quadrangle, Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA 94305, or Steven Levitt,
Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL
60637. Email: jjd@stanford.edu; slevitt@midway.uchicago.edu.
1. For a sampling of the academic literature, see Blumstein and Wallman[2000] and the articles appearing in the 1998 Summer issue (Volume 88) of the
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, especially Blumstein and Rosenfeld[1998], Kelling and Bratton [1998], and Donohue [1998]. See Buttereld [1997a,© 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology.
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2001

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in the number of police, improved policing strategies such as
those adopted in New York, declines in the crack cocaine trade,the strong economy, and increased expenditures on victim precautions such as security guards and alarms.
None of these factors, however, can provide an entirely satisfactory explanation for the large, widespread, and persistent
drop in crime in the 1990s. Some of these trends, such as theincreasing scale of imprisonment, the rise in police, and expenditures on victim precaution, have been ongoing for over two decades, and thus cannot plausibly explain the recent abrupt improvement in crime. Moreover, the widespread nature of thecrime drop argues against explanations such as improved policing
techniques since many cities that have not improved their police
forces (e.g., Los Angeles) have nonetheless seen enormous crime
declines. A similar argument holds for crack cocaine. Many areasof the country that have never had a pronounced crack trade (forinstance, suburban and rural areas) have nonetheless experienced substantial decreases in crime. Finally, although a strong
economy is supercially consistent with the drop in crime since1991, previous research has established only a weak link between
economic performance and violent crime [Freeman 1995] and in
one case even suggested that murder rates might vary procyclically [Ruhm 2000].
While acknowledging that all of these factors may have also
served to dampen crime, we consider a novel explanation for thesudden crime drop of the 1990s: the decision to legalize abortion
over a quarter century ago.2 The Supreme Court’s 1973 decisionin Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion nationwide potentially ts thecriteria for explaining a large, abrupt, and continuing decrease incrime. The sheer magnitude of the number of abortions performed
satises the rst criterion that any shock underlying the recent
drop in crime must be substantial. Seven years after Roe v. Wade,over 1.6 million abortions were being performed annually—almost one abortion for every two live births. Moreover, the legal1997b, 1999] for a selection of articles appearing in The New York Times andFletcher [2000] for a recent article in The Washington Post.
2. We are unaware of any scholarly article that has examined this effect. We
have recently learned, however, that the former police chief of Minneapolis has
written that abortion is “arguably the only effective crime-prevention device
adopted in this nation since the late 1960s” [Bouza 1990]. In his subsequent 1994
gubernatorial campaign, Bouza was attacked for this opinion [Short 1994]. Immediately after Bouza’s view was publicized just prior to the election, Bouza fell
sharply in the polls.

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381

ization of abortion in ve states in 1970, and then for the nation
as a whole in 1973, were abrupt legal developments that mightplausibly have a similarly abrupt inuence 15–20 years later
when the cohorts born in the wake of liberalized abortion would
start reaching their high-crime years. Finally, any inuence of achange in abortion would impact crime cumulatively as successive affected cohorts entered into their high-crime late adolescentyears, providing a reason why crime has continued to fall year
after year.
Legalized abortion may lead to reduced crime either throughreductions in cohort sizes or through lower per capita offending
rates for affected cohorts. The smaller cohort that results fromabortion legalization means that when that cohort reaches thelate teens and twenties, there will be fewer young males in theirhighest-crime years, and thus less crime. More interesting andimportant is the possibility that children born after abortion
legalization may on average have lower subsequent rates of criminality for either of two reasons. First, women who have abortions
are those most at risk to give birth to children who would engage
in criminal activity. Teenagers, unmarried women, and the economically disadvantaged are all substantially more likely to seek
abortions [Levine et al. 1996]. Recent studies have found children
born to these mothers to be at higher risk for committing crime inadolescence [Comanor and Phillips 1999]. Gruber, Levine, andStaiger [1999], in the paper most similar to ours, document thatthe early life circumstances of those children on the margin ofabortion are difcult along many dimensions: infant mortality,
growing up in a single-parent family, and experiencing poverty.
Second, women may use abortion to optimize the timing of childbearing. A given woman’s ability to provide a nurturing environment to a child can uctuate over time depending on the woman’sage, education, and income, as well as the presence of a father inthe child’s life, whether the pregnancy is wanted, and any drug or
alcohol abuse both in utero and after the birth. Consequently,
legalized abortion provides a woman the opportunity to delay
childbearing if the current conditions are suboptimal. Even if
lifetime fertility remains constant for all women, children areborn into better environments, and future criminality is likely tobe reduced.
A number of anecdotal empirical facts support the existence
and magnitude of the crime-reducing impact of abortion. First, we
see a broad consistency with the timing of legalization of abortion

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and the subsequent drop in crime. For example, the peak ages forviolent crime are roughly 18 –24, and crime starts turning downaround 1992, roughly the time at which the rst cohort born
following Roe v. Wade would hit its criminal prime. Second, as welater demonstrate, the ve states that legalized abortion in 1970
saw drops in crime before the other 45 states and the District ofColumbia, which did not allow abortions until the Supreme Court
decision in 1973.
Third, our more formal analysis shows that higher rates ofabortion in a state in the 1970s and early 1980s are strongly
linked to lower crime over the period from 1985 to 1997. Thisnding is true after controlling for a variety of factors that inuence crime, such as the level of incarceration, the number ofpolice, and measures of the state’s economic well-being (the unemployment rate, income per capita, and poverty rate). The estimated magnitude of the impact of legalized abortion on crime islarge. According to our estimates, as shown on Table II, stateswith high rates of abortion have experienced roughly a 30 percent
drop in crime relative to low-abortion regions since 1985. While
one must be cautious in extrapolating our results out of sample,
the estimates suggest that legalized abortion can account for
about half the observed decline in crime in the United States
between 1991 and 1997.
A number of factors lead us to believe that the link between
abortion and crime is causal. First, there is no relationship between abortion rates in the mid-1970s and crime changes between 1972 and 1985 (prior to the point when the abortionaffected cohorts have reached the age of signicant criminal
involvement). Second, virtually all of the abortion-related crime
decrease can be attributed to reductions in crime among thecohorts born after abortion legalization. There is little change incrime among older cohorts.
We should emphasize that our goal is to understand why
crime has fallen sharply in the 1990s, and to explore the contribution to this decline that may have come from the legalization ofabortion in the 1970s. In attempting to identify a link between
legalized abortion and crime, we do not mean to suggest that sucha link is “good” or “just,” but rather, merely to show that such a
relationship exists. In short, ours is a purely positive, not a
normative analysis, although of course we recognize that there is

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

383

an active debate about the moral and ethical implications ofabortion.3
The structure of the paper is as follows: Section II reviews theliterature and provides a brief history of abortion. Section III
describes how the legalization of abortion can inuence crime
rates by changing the proportion of high-risk children entering
the high-crime late adolescent years, and examines the likely
magnitude of these effects based on past research ndings. Section IV presents the basic empirical evidence that supports the
proposed negative relationship between abortion and crime. Section V provides evidence that the reduction in crime comes predominantly from the lower crime rates of those born after thelegalization of abortion. Section VI concludes. A Data Appendix
with the sources of all variables used in the analysis is also
provided.
II. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF LEGALIZED A BORTION
Under the governing principles of English common law, abortion prior to “quickening” (when the rst movements of the fetus
could be felt, usually around the sixteenth to eighteenth week ofthe pregnancy) was lawful. This common law rule was in force
throughout America until the rst law in the United States
restricting abortions was adopted in New York in 1828 [David etal. 1988, pp. 12–13]. Over the next 60 years, more and more states
followed the lead of New York, and by 1900 abortion was illegal
throughout the country.
The rst modest efforts at abortion liberalization began toemerge between 1967 and 1970 when a number of states began toallow abortion under limited circumstances.4 Legal abortion be3. For example, Paulsen [1989, pp. 49, 76 –77] considers legalized abortion to
be worse than slavery (since it involves death) and the Holocaust (since the 34
million post-Roe abortions are numerically greater than the six million Jews killed
in Europe). Despite these claims, the Supreme Court has ruled that women havea fundamental constitutional right of privacy to abort an early-term fetus and thatthe state cannot unduly burden this right.
4. The 1962 amendments to the Model Penal Code provided for legal abortions to prevent the death or grave impairment of the physical and mental healthof the woman, or if the fetus would be born with a grave physical or mental defector in the case of rape or incest. These provisions were adopted in 1967 in Colorado,
North Carolina, and California, in 1968 in Florida, Georgia, and Maryland, in1969 in Arkansas, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oregon, and in 1970 in Delaware,South Carolina, and Virginia—a total of thirteen states. For excellent reviews ofstate and federal abortions laws, see Merz, Jackson, and Klerman [1995] and Alan
Guttmacher Institute [1989].

384

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICSFIGURE I
Total Abortions by Year
Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute [1992].

came broadly available in ve states in 1970 when New York,
Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii repealed their antiabortion
laws, and the Supreme Court of California (ruling in late 1969)
held that the state’s law banning abortion was unconstitutional.
Legalized abortion was suddenly extended to the entire UnitedStates on January 22, 1973, with the landmark ruling of theUnited States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.
The Supreme Court in Roe explicitly considered the consequences of its decision in stating:
The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman bydenying this choice altogether is apparent. Specic and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or
additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future.
Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may betaxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associatedwith the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into afamily already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it.5

The available data suggest that the number of abortions
increased dramatically following legalization, although there
is little direct evidence on the number of illegal abortions
performed in the 1960s. As Figure I illustrates, the total num5. Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 110, 153 (1973).

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

385

ber of documented abortions rose sharply in the wake of Roe,from under 750,000 in 1973 (when live births totaled 3.1 million) to over 1.6 million in 1980 (when live births totaled 3.6
million).6 If illegal abortions were already being performed inequivalent numbers, one would not expect a seven-year lag inreaching a steady state. Moreover, the costs of an abortion—
nancial and otherwise— dropped considerably after legalization. Kaplan [1988, p. 164] notes that “an illegal abortion
before Roe v. Wade cost $400 to $500, while today, thirteen
years after the decision, the now legal procedure can be procured for as little as $80.” 7 The costs of nding and traveling toan illegal abortionist and any attendant cost of engaging inillegal and therefore riskier and socially disapproved conduct
were also reduced by legalization.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence that legalization
increased abortion comes from Michael [1999], who nds abortion rates to be roughly an order of magnitude higher after
legalization using self-reported data on pregnancy outcome
histories. Thus, the rst prerequisite for legalization to havean impact on crime is met—legalization increased the rate ofabortion.
Consistent with this nding is a dramatic decline in thenumber of children put up for adoption after abortion became
legal. According to Stolley [1993], almost 9 percent of premaritalbirths were placed for adoption before 1973; that number fell to 4
percent for births occurring between 1973 and 1981. The total
number of adoptions rose from 90,000 in 1957 to over 170,000 in
1970; by 1975 adoptions had fallen to 130,000.

6. In our analysis we use Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) data on abortions.
Although Michael [1999] argues that the AGI may substantially overstate true
abortion rates, “it is generally acknowledged [that AGI data provide] the mostaccurate count of induced abortions in the United States.” Apparently, “reportingis less complete for nonwhites than for whites, and overall reporting . . . has
declined over time” [Joyce and Kaestner 1996, p. 185].
7. The cost to the mother also depends on the availability of public funding,which was affected by the Hyde Amendment, which cut off federal funding ofabortion for Medicaid recipients. The Hyde Amendment became law on September
30, 1976. The Hyde Amendment has been subject to a series of revisions andrestraining orders since that time. No consensus exists as to the impact of theHyde Amendment on the number of abortions or births, although most recent
research suggests any impact is now small [Joyce and Kaestner 1996; Kane andStaiger 1996].

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III. THE MECHANISM BY WHICH ABORTION LEGALIZATIONLOWERS CRIME RATESIn this section we explore in detail the theoretical link between legalization of abortion in the early 1970s and subsequentdrops in crime fteen to twenty years later. We identify a numberof alternative pathways through which abortion can affect crime.
We then generate “back-of-the-envelope” calculations as to thelikely magnitude of the various channels based on previous research ndings.
The simplest way in which legalized abortion reduces crimeis through smaller cohort sizes. When those smaller cohorts reachthe high-crime late adolescent years, there are simply fewer
people to commit crime. Levine et al. [1996] nd that legalization
is associated with roughly a 5 percent drop in birth rates.8 Assuming that the fall in births is a random sample of all births,
total crime committed by this cohort would be expected to fallcommensurately.
Far more interesting from our perspective is the possibility
that abortion has a disproportionate effect on the births of those
who are most at risk of engaging in criminal behavior.9 To theextent that abortion is more frequent among those parents who
are least willing or able to provide a nurturing home environment, as a large and growing body of evidence suggests, theimpact of legalized abortion on crime might be far greater than its
effect on fertility rates.10 This is particularly true given that 6
percent of any birth cohort will commit roughly half the crime
8. This decline is broadly consistent with survey responses by mothers in1973 who report that approximately 13 percent of lifetime births were unwanted[Statistical Abstract of the United States 1980, p. 65, table 99]. Note, however,that the decline in births is far less than the number of abortions, suggesting thatthe number of conceptions increased substantially—an example of insurance
leading to moral hazard. The insurance that abortion provides against unwanted
pregnancy induces more sexual conduct or diminished protections against pregnancy in a way that substantially increases the number of pregnancies. Anotherpossible explanation for the gap between abortion rates and fertility rate changes
is that illegal abortion was already suppressing the birth rate by 15–20 percent
and legalization reduced it another 5–10 percent, but this would imply a higher
gure for the number of illegal abortions than we think is likely, as discussed
above.
9. As noted earlier, this effect can occur either because of lower lifetime
fertility rates among high-risk groups, or because women delay childbearing until
conditions are more favorable for successfully raising children.
10. In addition, with an estimated number of over 150,000 rapes in 1973
(often thought to be a conservative estimate), it is possible that 10,000 to 15,000
conceptions occurred that year as a result of rape, and one might expect a
substantial proportion of these high-risk conceptions would end in abortion [Bureau of Justice Statistics 1985, p. 230, Table 3.2].

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

387[Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin 1972; Tracy, Wolfgang, and Figlio
1990]. 11
Prior to the legalization of abortion, there was a very stronglink between the number of unwanted births and low maternal
education over the period from 1965 through 1970 [Commission
on Population Growth and the American Future 1972, p. 98].
Levine et al. [1996] found that the drop in births associated withabortion legalization was not uniform across all groups. They
estimated that the drop in births was roughly twice as great for
teenage and nonwhite mothers as it was for the nonteen, white
population.12 In the years immediately following Roe v. Wade,
data from the Centers for Disease Control [1994] indicate that
almost one-third of abortions were performed on teenagers. Angrist and Evans [1996] found that while abortion reforms had
relatively modest effects on the fertility of white women, “black
women who were exposed to abortion reforms experienced large
reductions in teen fertility and teen out-of-wedlock fertility.”
A number of studies have shown that the availability ofabortion improves infant outcomes by reducing the number of lowbirthweight babies and neonatal mortality [Grossman and Jacobowitz 1981; Corman and Grossman 1985; Joyce 1987; Grossman
and Joyce 1990]. Moreover, Gruber, Levine, and Staiger [1999, p.
265] conclude that “the average living circumstances of cohorts
born immediately after abortion became legalized improved substantially relative to preceding cohorts.” They go on to note that“the marginal children who were not born as a result of abortion
legalization would have systematically been born into less favorable circumstances if the pregnancies had not been terminated:
they would have been 60 percent more likely to live in a singleparent household, 50 percent more likely to live in poverty, 45
percent more likely to be in a household collecting welfare, and 40
percent more likely to die during the rst year of life.”
Previous research has found that an adverse family environment is strongly linked to future criminality. Both Loeber and11. The high concentration rates of crime among a relatively small number ofoffenders makes it more likely that legalized abortion would have larger effects oncrime than on other social outcomes such as high school dropout rates or unemployment rates. A given child who has failed to complete school or secure a job
counts as only one event in measuring school dropout or unemployment rates.
Conversely, a single child may commit hundreds of crimes and thereby contribute
far more powerfully to a higher crime rate.
12. This is not surprising since in the late 1960s the “pill” and other birthcontrol mechanisms were far more readily available to married, educated, andafuent women [Goldin and Katz 2000].

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Stouthamer-Loeber [1986] and Sampson and Laub [1993] present
evidence that a variety of unfavorable parental behaviors (e.g.,maternal rejection, erratic/harsh behavior on the part of parents,
lack of parental supervision) are among the best predictors ofjuvenile delinquency. Raine, Brennan, and Medick [1994], andRaine et al. [1996] argue that birth complications combined withearly maternal rejection predispose boys to violent crime at age
eighteen. Rasanen et al. [1999] nd that the risk of violent crimefor Finnish males born in 1966 is a function of (in descendingorder of impact): mother’s low education, teenage mother, singleparent family, mother did not want pregnancy, and mothersmoked during pregnancy. It is possible that abortion could reduce the number of children born under all these circumstances:teenagers who have abortions can get more education before theygive birth and may delay childbearing until they are married orwant a child or both. In addition, women who inadvertently
become pregnant may have engaged in behavior such as smoking,drinking, or using drugs that elevate the prospect of future criminality of their offspring.
A number of studies have looked at cases of women, living injurisdictions in which governmental approval to have an abortion
was required, who sought to have an abortion, but were denied
the right to do so [David et al. 1988; Posner 1992, p. 283].13 Dagg
[1991] reports that these women overwhelmingly kept their babies, rather than giving them up for adoption, but that they often
resented the unwanted children and were far less likely thanother mothers to nurture, hold, and breastfeed these children. In
an array of studies in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, Dagg
found that the children who were born because their mothers
were denied an abortion were substantially more likely to be
involved in crime and have poorer life prospects, even whencontrolling for the income, age, education, and health of themother. This literature provides strong evidence that unwanted
children are likely to be disproportionately involved in criminal
activity, which may be the causal pathway from greater availability of abortion to lower rates of crime.
Evidence from prisoner surveys further reinforces the link
between a difcult home environment as a child and later crim13. David et al. [1988] review the ndings of separate studies of the effects ofdenied abortion for cohorts born in Goteberg, Sweden in 1939 –1942, Stockholm in
1948, all of Sweden in 1960, and Prague in 1961–1963.

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

389

inality [Beck et al. 1993]. In 1991, 14 percent of prisoners reported growing up with neither parent present, and 43 percent
reported having only one parent (compared with 3 percent and 24
percent, respectively, for the overall population). Thirty-eightpercent of prisoners report that their parents or guardiansabused alcohol or drugs; almost one-third of female inmates report being sexually abused before the age of eighteen.
A. The Expected Magnitude of the Impact of Abortion
Legalization on Crime
Before presenting our empirical estimates in the next section, we present “back-of-the-envelope” estimates of the plausible
magnitude of the impact of legalized abortion on crime. Previous
researchers have studied (1) how legalized abortion affects birthrates across different groups, and (2) crime rates across groups.
By combining these two sets of estimates, we can obtain a crude
prediction of the impact of legalized abortion on crime.
This analysis considers four factors: race, teenage motherhood, unmarried motherhood, and unwantedness. Beginningwith the rst three of these factors, we use the 1990 Census todetermine the proportion of children in each of the eight possible
demographic categories (e.g., white children born to teenage
mothers growing up in a single-parent household, or black children born to nonteenage mothers growing up in two-parent
households). We then use the estimates of Levine et al. [1996] todetermine what those proportions might have been in the absenceof legalized abortion. Using Rasanen et al. [1999] and observed
frequencies of crime by race in the United States, we generate
category-specic crime rates corresponding to each of the eightcells. Combining these crime rates with the change in the numberof births in each category due to abortion provides an estimate of
the hypothetical reduction in crime. Finally, under the assumption that 75 percent of unwanted births are aborted (this number
appears consistent with data from self-reported pregnancy histories), we estimate the contribution to lower crime from fewer
unwanted births.14 It is important to note that our calculations
below isolate the marginal contribution of race, teenage motherhood, unmarried motherhood, and unwantedness. Thus, when

14. A full description of the assumptions and calculations is available fromthe authors on request.

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computing the impact of race, we net out any racial differences inthose other characteristics in order to avoid double counting.
The results of this exercise for homicide are as follows. All
values reported are the hypothetical reduction in total homicides
committed by members of a given cohort. Through a purely mechanical relationship, the 5.4 percent overall postlegalization decline in cohort size obtained by Levine et al. [1996] translates into
a 5.4 percent reduction in homicide.
Fertility declines for black women are three times greaterthan for whites (12 percent compared with 4 percent). Given that
homicide rates of black youths are roughly nine times higher thanthose of white youths, racial differences in the fertility effects ofabortion are likely to translate into greater homicide reductions.
Under the assumption that those black and white births eliminated by legalized abortion would have experienced the averagecriminal propensities of their respective races, then the predicted
reduction in homicide is 8.9 percent. In other words, taking into
account differential abortion rates by race raises the predicted
impact of abortion legalization on homicide from 5.4 percent to
8.9 percent.15
Teenagers and unwed women experience reductions in fertility of 13 and 7 percent, respectively, well above that for nonteenage, married women. Rasanen et al. [1999] nd, after controlling for other characteristics, that having a teenage motherroughly doubles a child’s propensity to commit crime, as does
growing up with a single parent.16 Accounting for these two
factors raises the estimated impact of abortion on homicide from
8.9 percent to 12.5 percent.
Adjusting for unwantedness, which more than doubles anindividual’s likelihood of crime based on the estimates of Rasanen
et al. [1999], raises the estimates from 12.5 percent to 18.5 percent. The impact of unwantedness is large because abortion ratesof unwanted pregnancies are very high, whereas wanted pregnancies are by denition not aborted.
Thus, using past estimates in the literature, we crudely
estimate that crime should fall by 18.5 percent in cohorts that
15. For other crimes, the impact of race is much lower because rates ofoffending and victimization are much more similar across races.
16. Comanor and Phillips [1999], using the National Longitudinal Survey ofYouth, nd that adolescents in households with absent fathers are 2.2 times more
likely to be charged with a crime as a juvenile, controlling for other observablefactors. That estimate is very close to the Rasanen et al. [1999] nding for Finnish
males that we use in our calculations.

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391

have access to legalized abortion. As of 1997, roughly 60 percent
of crimes were committed by individuals born after legalized
abortion, implying that (thus far) the hypothetical impact ofabortion on crime is only 60 percent of the impact on affectedcohorts, or about an 11 percent reduction. To the extent that otherfactors are correlated with both criminal propensities and abortion likelihoods (e.g., poverty, maternal education, religiosity),
this rough estimate is likely to understate the true impact.17
Given that the observed declines in crime in the 1990s are 30 – 40
percent, abortion may be an important factor in explaining thecrime drop. In the next section we present empirical estimates of
the impact of abortion on crime that are roughly consistent withthese hypothetical calculations.
IV. EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OF LEGALIZED A BORTION
AFFECTING C RIME RATESWe begin our empirical analysis by establishing a relationship between crime changes in the 1990s and legalized abortionin the early 1970s. We consider three different sources of variation: the national time series of crime and abortion, differential
crime patterns across early legalizers and other states, and theimpact of state abortion rates (properly lagged) on state crime
rates. In Section V we focus on arrest rates, which allows us todecompose the effect of abortion by the age of offenders.
A. National Time Series
Figure II presents per capita crime rates for the UnitedStates for violent crime, property crime, and murder for theperiod 1973–1999, as measured in the Uniform Crime Reports
compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.18 Between 1973
17. These estimates will understate the true impact of abortion on crime ifthere are other factors beyond the four we explicitly considered that positively
covary with abortion and crime, such as religiosity, poverty, or low maternal
education. Indeed, this last factor was found by Rasanen et al. [1999] to be thesingle most powerful factor leading to criminality by the children. Moreover, to theextent that abortion reduces crime committed by other family members as a resultof the benecial effects of a reduction in family size (since larger family size
increases the likelihood of criminality), this effect would also be missed. On theother hand, a countervailing force is that a reduction in the supply of criminals
will induce higher returns to entry into the criminal occupations thereby offsetting through recruitment the initial dampening effect on crime. One would suspect this effect to be limited to crimes involving active markets for illegal substances (drugs) or services (prostitution).
18. Uniform Crime Reports compile the number of crimes reported to the392

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICSFIGURE II
Crime Rates from the Uniform Crime Reports, 1973–1999
Data are national aggregate per capita reported violent crime, property crime,and murder, indexed to equal 100 in the year 1973. All data are from the FBI’s
Uniform Crime Reports, published annually.

and 1991, violent crime nearly doubled, property crime increased
almost 40 percent, and murder was roughly unchanged (despite
substantial uctuations in the intervening years). The year 1991
represents a local maximum for all three of the crime measures.
Since that time, each of these crime categories has steadily fallen.
Murder has fallen by 40 percent and the other two categories aredown more than 30 percent.
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which
gathers information on self-reported crime victimizations, offers
another perspective on national crime patterns in Figure III.
According to victimization surveys, violent crime fell through theearly 1980s, increased from that point until 1993, and fell sharply
thereafter. Property crime fell throughout the period 1973 to
1991, and began to fall even more quickly thereafter. The crime
declines in the 1990s are even greater using victimization data
than the reported crime statistics. It is notable that the longer
time-series patterns of UCR and victimization data do not matchpolice in various crime categories each year. While the potential shortcomings ofthese data are well recognized (e.g., O’Brien [1985]), they remain the only sourceof geographically disaggregated crime data available in the United States.

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393

FIGURE III
National Crime Victimization Survey, 1973–1998
Data are national aggregate per capita violent crime and property crime victimizations, indexed to equal 100 in the year 1973. All data are based on the
National Crime Survey, conducted annually. Data have been adjusted to correct
for a one-time shift associated with the redesign of the survey in the early 1990s.

closely, yet both demonstrate a distinct break from trend in the
1990s.
The timing of the break in the national crime rate is consistent with a legalized abortion story. In 1991 the rst cohort
affected by Roe v. Wade would have been roughly seventeen years
old, just beginning to enter the highest crime adolescent years.19
In the early-legalizing states (in which slightly more than 20
percent of all Americans reside), the rst cohort affected by legalized abortion would have been twenty years of age, roughly the
19. The Supreme Court handed down the decision in Roe v. Wade on January
22, 1973. Typically, there is a six-to-seven-month lag between the time that anabortion would be performed and the time that the birth would have occurred.
Thus, the rst births affected would be those born in late 1973.
If women who already had children in 1973 used abortion to prevent increases
in family size, then abortion may indirectly lower criminality for the remaining
children who will receive greater per child contributions of parental resources[Becker 1981; Barber, Axinn, and Thornton 1999]. Sampson and Laub [1993, p.
81] and Rasanen et al. [1999] nd that family size signicantly increases delinquency. Note that this family size effect suggests that criminality could be reduced
for children who were born a number of years in advance of any abortion thatprevents further increases in family size, and thus would allow the effect ofabortion on crime to be observed prior to the time that the direct effect of abortion
would be observed.

394

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

peak of the age-crime prole [Blumstein et al. 1986; Cook andLaub 1998].
The continual decrease in crime between 1991 and 1999 is
also consistent with the hypothesized effects of abortion. With
each passing year, the fraction of the criminal population thatwas born postlegalization increases. Thus, the impact of abortion
will be felt only gradually. To formalize this idea, we dene anindex that is designed to reect the effect of all previous abortions
on crime in a particular year t. Obviously, recent abortions will
not have any direct impact on crime today since infants commit
little crime. As the postlegalization cohorts age, however, we canestimate the effect of abortion by seeing how much crime (proxiedby the percentage of arrests committed by those of that age) is
committed by the particular cohort. Thus, we dene the “effective
legalized abortion rate” relevant to crime in year t as theweighted average legalized abortion rate across all cohorts ofarrestees, i.e.,(1)

Effective_Abortiont 5

O Abortion* ( Arrests /Arrests ),
t2 a

a

total

a

where t indexes years and a indexes the age of a cohort. Abortionis the number of abortions per live birth, and the ratio of arrests
inside the parentheses is the fraction of arrests for a given crime
involving members of cohort a. In a steady state with all cohorts
subjected to the same abortion rate, the effective abortion rate isequal to the actual abortion rate. For many years following the
introduction of legalized abortion, the effective abortion rate will
be below the actual abortion rate since many active criminal
cohorts are too old to have been affected by legalized abortion. For
instance, following Roe v. Wade, the actual abortion rate (per1000 live births) rose to a steady state of about 400. Yet we
estimate that the effective abortion rate in 1991 was only about
33 for homicide, 63 for violent crime, and 126 for property crime.
Because property crime is disproportionately done by the young,the effect of abortion legalization is felt earlier.20 The effective
rates grew steadily, rising to 142, 180, and 252, respectively, by1997. If legalized abortion reduces crime, then crime should continue to fall (all else equal) as long as the effective abortion rate

20. Details of this calculation are available from the authors. This effective
abortion rate includes legal abortion exposure prior to 1973 in the ve states thatlegalized in 1970.

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

395

is rising, precisely the pattern observed in actual crime data in
Figures II and III. 21
B. Comparing Crime Trends in Early-Legalizing States versus
the Rest of the United States
As noted earlier in the paper, ve states (Alaska, California,
Hawaii, New York, and Washington) legalized or quasi-legalized
abortion around 1970; in the remaining states, abortion did not
become legal until 1973. The staggered timing of the introductionof legalized abortion provides a potential avenue for assessing its
impact.22 Using this source of variation to explore the consequences of abortion legalization, Levine et al. [1996] analyze thefertility effects; Angrist and Evans [1996] study the impact on
female labor supply; and Gruber, Levine, and Staiger [1999]
examine the effect on a variety of measures of child welfare.
For the purposes of analyzing crime, the comparison of early
legalizers to all other states is less than ideal. First, criminal
involvement does not jump or fall abruptly with age, but rather
steadily increases through the teenage years before eventually
declining. Early-legalizing states only have a three-year headstart. Thus, it may be difcult to identify an impact on overall
crime rates since even in the peak crime ages three cohorts
account for less than 20 percent of overall arrests. Second, statesthat legalized abortion in 1970 continued to have higher abortion
rates even after Roe v. Wade. For instance, in 1976, three years
after Roe v. Wade was handed down, the early-legalizing states
21. It is worth noting one ostensible inconsistency between our predictions
and the disaggregated time-series data. As noted by Cook and Laub [1998] andBlumstein and Rosenfeld [1998], there was a sharp spike in youth homicide rates
in the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially among African-Americans. These
cohorts were born after legalized abortion. Importantly, this nding is not inconsistent with the central claim that abortion legalization contributed to lower crime
rates, but merely shows that this dampening effect on crime can be outweighed in
the short term by factors that stimulate crime. Elevated youth homicide rates inthis period appear to be clearly linked to the rise of crack and the easy availabilityof guns. That abortion is only one factor inuencing crime in the late 1980s points
out the caution required in drawing any conclusions regarding an abortion-crime
link based on time-series evidence alone.
22. Evidence in Levine et al. [1996] suggests that there was a substantial
amount of border crossing in order to obtain legal abortions prior to 1973. To theextent that is true, the observed differences in crime between early-legalizing
states and all others will be muted. It appears, however, that the more afuent
tended to travel for abortions, which probably diminishes the importance of suchactivity for assessments about crime. Some evidence of this is seen in the fact thatabortions performed in New York on white women were cut in half in the wake ofthe decision in Roe v. Wade, but there was a far smaller drop in the number ofabortions performed in New York on black women.

396

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

had a 1985 population-weighted average rate of 593 abortions perlive births, compared with 308 for all other states. Given that the
impact of abortion on crime happens only gradually, it is difcultto disentangle the separate impacts of early legalization andhigher steady state abortion rates.23
Bearing in mind these important caveats, a comparison ofcrime trends in early-legalizing and all other states is displayedin Table I, as well as the difference between those two values. For
each of three crime categories (violent, property, murder), we
present percent changes in crime by six-year periods for the years
1976 –1994, and for the period 1994 –1997. The bottom panel ofthe table also presents the effective abortion rate for violent crimefor the two sets of states at the end of each time period, computed
using equation (1). 24
Prior to 1982, legalized abortion should have no impact on
crime since the rst cohort affected by abortion is no more thantwelve years old. These years are included as a check on any
preexisting trends in crime rates across the two sets of states. As
Table I shows, these preexisting trends are not statistically different across early-legalizing and all other states, nor is therelative pattern constant across the three crime categories. Bothproperty and violent crime were increasing at a slower rate inearly legalizing states between 1976 and 1982, whereas murder
was rising faster in early-legalizing states.
As shown in the bottom panel of Table I, by 1988 the effective
abortion rate for violent crime in early-legalizing states was
64.0 compared with 10.4 in the rest of the United States. To
explore whether crime rates began to respond to early abortion
legalization between 1982 and 1988, look at the rows labeled“Difference” in the 1982–1988 column. A negative sign for thisdifference suggests that crime fell faster in the states that legalized abortion earlier (consistent with the theory of this paper), while a positive sign suggests the opposite. Here we see
the evidence of the impact of early legalization for the 1982–
23. From the broader perspective of determining whether crime rates respond to abortion, this distinction may be irrelevant. However, the inability to
distinguish the two channels of impact lessens the extent to which a comparisonof early legalizers to other states represents a distinct source of variation from theregression analysis using abortion rates across states after 1973.
24. The effective abortion rate for violent crime falls between the corresponding measures for property crime and homicide. The pattern of differences issimilar for the other crime categories, except that the gap rises more (less) quickly
for property crime (homicide).

397

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIMETABLE ICRIME TRENDS FOR STATES LEGALIZING ABORTION EARLY VERSUSTHE REST OF THE U NITED STATESPercent change in crime rate over the period
Crime category
Violent crime
Early legalizers
Rest of U. S.
Difference
Property crime
Early legalizers
Rest of U. S.
Difference
Murder
Early legalizers
Rest of U. S.
Difference
Effective abortion rate
at end of period
Early legalizers
Rest of U. S.
Difference

1976–1982

1982–1985

1988–1994

1994–1997

Cumulative,
1982–1997

16.6
20.9
2 4.3
(5.5)

11.1
13.2
2 2.1
(5.4)

1.9
15.4
2 13.4(4.4)

2 25.8
2 11.02 14.8(3.3)

2 12.817.6
2 30.4
(8.1)

1.7
6.0
2 4.3
(2.9)

2 8.3
1.5
2 9.8
(4.0)

2 14.3
2 5.9
2 8.4
(4.2)

2 21.52 4.3
2 17.2(2.4)

2 44.12 8.8
2 35.3
(5.8)

6.3
1.7
4.6
(7.4)

0.5
2 8.8
9.3
(6.8)

2.7
5.2
2 2.5
(8.6)

2 44.02 21.1
2 22.9(6.8)

2 40.82 24.6
2 16.2(10.7)

0.0
0.0
0.0

64.0
10.4
53.6

238.6
87.7
150.9

327.0
141.0
186.0

327.0
141.0
186.0

Early legalizing states are Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, and Washington. These ve states
legalized abortion in late 1969 or 1970. In the remaining states, abortion became legal in 1973 after Roe v.
Wade. Percent change in crime rate is calculated by subtracting the xed 1985 population-weighted averageof the natural log of the crime rate at the beginning of the period from the xed 1985 population-weighted
average of the natural log of the crime rate at the end of the period. The rows labeled “Difference” are thedifference between early legalizers and the rest of the United States (standard errors are reported inparentheses). The bottom panel of the table presents the effective abortion rate for violent crime, ascalculated using equation (1) in the text, based on the observed age distribution of national arrests for violent
crime in 1985. Entries in the table are xed 1985 population-weighted averages of the states. Abortion data
are from the Alan Guttmacher Institute; crime data are from Uniform Crime Reports. Because of missing
crime data for 1976, the 1976 –1982 calculations omit the District of Columbia. Precise data sources areprovided in the Data Appendix.

1988 period is mixed. Property crime fell signicantly in earlylegalizing states relative to the rest of the United States (2 9.8
percentage points), and the difference is more than twice as large
as the preexisting trend in the rst column. There is no apparent
impact on violent crime or murder by 1988. Nonetheless, theearlier impact on property crime is consistent with the fact that
offenses committed by the very young are disproportionately concentrated in property crime. For instance, in 1995 those underage eighteen accounted for over one-third of all property crimearrests, but less than 20 percent of violent crime and murderarrests.

398

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICSFIGURE IVa
Changes in Violent Crime and Abortion Rates, 1985–1997

FIGURE IVb
Changes in Property Crime and Abortion Rates, 1985–1997

By 1994, the gap in the “effective abortion rate” between
early-legalizing states and all others had grown to 150.9. The
early-legalizing states experienced declines in crime relative tothe rest of the United States in all three crime categories. The
trend accelerates between 1994 and 1997, with double-digit (andhighly statistically signicant) differences for each of the crimes.
The last column of Table I shows that the cumulative decrease in

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

399

FIGURE IVc
Changes in Murder and Abortion Rates, 1985–1997
The vertical axis in Figures IVa–IVc corresponds to the log change in the named
crime category between 1985 and 1997. The horizontal axis is the change in theeffective abortion rate corresponding to the crime category between 1985 and1997. The effective abortion rate is the estimated average abortion rate per 1000
live births for criminals in the state, as calculated using equation (1) in the text.
Washington, DC, which is an extreme outlier with respect to abortion rates, isomitted from the gures, but is included in all other statistical analyses.

crime between 1982–1997 for early-legalizing states comparedwith the rest of the nation is 16.2 percent greater for murder, 30.4
percent greater for violent crime, and 35.3 percent greater for
property crime. Realistically, these crime decreases are too large
to be attributed to the three-year head start in the early-legalizing states. Put another way, the observed differences in the“effective abortion rate” documented in the bottom of Table I
reect not only the head start on abortion, but also higher steadystate rates. Thus, the source of variation exploited in Table I is
not entirely distinct from that used in the state-level panel regressions below.
C. State-Level Changes in Crime as a Function of
Postlegalization Abortion Rates
The preceding discussion provides suggestive evidence of an
impact of abortion on crime. In what follows, we explore thisrelationship more systematically by using a panel data analysis

400

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICSTABLE IICRIME CHANGES 1985–1997 AS A FUNCTION OF ABORTION RATES 1973–1976
Abortionfrequency(Ranked byeffective
abortion rate
in 1997)

Effective
abortionsper 1000
live births,
1997

Violent
crime

Property
crime

MurderViolent
crime

Property
crime

MurderLowestMediumHighest

67.5
135.0
257.1

+ 31.8+ 28.8+ 32.2+ 29.8+ 31.1+ 15.2

2 21.1
2 19.72 9.7+ 29.2+ 18.0
2 2.4

+ 9.3
+ 2.2
2 23.1+ 4.1
2 12.6
2 25.9% Change in crime rate,
1973–1985% Change in crime rate,
1985–1997

States are ranked by effective abortion rates for violent crime in 1997, with the seventeen states withlowest abortion rates classied as “lowest,” the next seventeen states classied as “medium,” and the highest
seventeen states (including District of Columbia) classied as “highest.” The effective abortion rate is theestimated average abortion rate per 1000 live births for criminals in the state, as calculated using equation(1) in the text, based on the observed age distribution of national arrests for violent crime in 1985. All values
in the table are weighted averages using 1985 state populations as weights. Percent change in crime percapita is calculated by subtracting the xed 1985 population-weighted average of the natural log of the crime
rate at the beginning of the period from the xed 1985 population-weighted average of the natural log of thecrime rate at the end of the period. Because crime rates are extremely low until the midteenage years,
legalized abortion is not predicted to have had a substantial impact on crime over the period 1973–1985, butwould be predicted to affect crime in the period 1985–1997. Abortion data are from the Alan Guttmacher
Institute; crime data are from Uniform Crime Reports. Precise data sources are provided in the Data
Appendix.

to relate state abortion rates after Roe v. Wade to state-levelchanges in crime over the period from 1985 through 1997.
Before presenting regression results, Figures IVa–IVc show
simple plots of log-changes in crime rates between 1985 and 1997
against the change in the state-level effective abortion rate overthat same time period.25 The three gures correspond to violent
crime, property crime, and murder, respectively. In each case,there is a clear negative relationship between crime changes overthe period 1985–1997 and abortion rates in the years immediately following Roe v. Wade. The tted population-weighted regression lines are also included in the gures. The R 2 from these
simple regressions range from .12 (murder) to .45 (property
crime), as reected in the relatively tighter t of the regression
line for the latter crime category.
The raw relationship between abortion rates in the 1970s
and falling crime in the 1990s emerges even more clearly in Table
II. States are ranked based on effective abortion rates in 1997 and25. The gures plot the scatter diagrams for all 50 states. The District ofColumbia is dropped from the graph, as it is an extreme outlier that does notaccurately reect the abortion rates of D.C. residents, as indicated in footnote 27,
below. All states had effective abortion rates close to zero in 1985, so the change
in the effective abortion rate between 1985 and 1997 is almost identical to theeffective abortion rate in 1997.

401

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

divided into three categories: low, medium, and high. Mean effective abortion rates, and percent changes in murder, violent
crime, and property crime for the periods 1973–1985 and 1985–
1997 are shown in the table for the three sets of states. Crime
data for the period 1973–1985 are included as a check on thevalidity of the results. There should be no effect of abortion on
crime between 1973–1985. To the extent that high and low abortion states systematically differ in the earlier period, questions
about the exogeneity of the abortion rate are raised. It is reassuring that the data reveal no clear differences in crime rates
across states between 1973 and 1985 as a function of the abortion
rate. In some instances crime was rising more quickly in highabortion states; in other cases the opposite is true. For the period
1985–1997, however, the results change dramatically. For eachcrime category, the high abortion states fell relative to the low
abortion states by at least 30 percentage points. In every instance, the medium abortion states had intermediate outcomeswith respect to crime.
The panel data regressions that we report are similar in
spirit to Figure IV and Table II, but utilize not only the endpointsof the sample, but also information from the intervening years, aswell as including a range of controls:(2)ln(CRIME st) 5

b 1ABORTst 1

Xst Q
1

g s1

l t1

e st,

where s indexes states and t reects time. The left-hand-side
variable is the relevant logged crime rate per capita. Our measureof abortion is the effective abortion rate (dened earlier) for agiven state, year, and crime category.26 X is a vector of state-level
controls that includes prisoners and police per capita, a range ofvariables capturing state economic conditions, lagged state welfare generosity, the presence of concealed handgun laws, and per
capita beer consumption. g s and l t represent state and year xed
effects. All regressions are weighted least squares with weights
based on state populations. All of the estimates we present are
adjusted for serial correlation in panel data using the method of
Bhargava et al. [1982]. 27
26. The weights used in computing the effective abortion rates are the percentage of arrests by age for a given crime category in the United States in 1985.
In other words, abortion rates are state-specic, but the same weighting function
is used for all states.
27. Blank, George, and London [1996] suggest that the ofcial abortion ratein Washington, DC is articially elevated because women from Maryland andVirginia frequently travel there to receive abortions. The CDC estimates that

402

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

Summary statistics for the sample are provided in Table III.
The summary statistics on abortion correspond to the effective
abortion rate, which is well below the actual abortion rate
throughout the sample because much of the criminal population
was born prior to legalized abortion. Actual national abortion
rates in the years immediately after Roe v. Wade were roughly
300 abortions per 1000 live births, but with considerable variation across states. For example, over the period from 1973–1976,
West Virginia had the lowest abortion rate (10 per 1000 live
births), while New York (763) and Washington, D.C. (1793) had
the highest rates. There is a great deal of variation in crimes per1000 residents, both across states and within states over time.
The same is true for arrest rates.
An important limitation of the data is that state abortion
rates are very highly serially correlated. The correlation between
state abortion rates in years t and t + 1 is .98. The ve-year andten-year correlations are .95 and .91, respectively. One implication of these high correlations is that it is very difcult using thedata alone to distinguish the impact of 1970s abortions on current
crime rates from the impact of 1990s abortions on current crime
rates; if one includes both lagged and current abortion rates inthe same specication, standard errors explode due to multicollinearity. Consequently, it must be recognized that our interpretation of the results relies on the assumption that there will be a
fteen-to-twenty year lag before abortion materially affects
crime. This lag between the act of abortion and its impact on
crime differentiates it from many other social phenomena likedivorce and poverty which may have both lagged and contemporaneous effects, making it very difcult to separately identify any
lagged effects.
Regression results are shown in Table IV. For each of thethree crime categories, two different specications are reported.
The odd-numbered columns present results without control variables (other than the state- and year-xed effects); the evencolumns add the full set of controls.
The top row of the table presents the coefcients on theabortion variable across specications. In all six cases, the coefcient is negative, implying that higher abortion rates are assoabout half of all abortions performed in the District of Columbia are on nonresidents (which is the highest percentage for any state); the comparable percentage
in New Jersey is 2 percent [Dye and Presser 1999, p. 143].

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

403

TABLE IIISUMMARY STATISTICS

Variable

MeanStandard
deviation(overall)Standard
deviation(within state)

Violent crime per 1000 residents
Property crime per 1000 residents
Murder per 1000 residents“Effective” abortion rate per 1000 live
births by crime:
Violent crime
Property crime
MurderPrisoners per 1000 residents
Police per 1000 residents
State personal income per capita($1997)
AFDC generosity per recipient family(t–15)
State unemployment rate (percent
unemployed)
Beer consumption per capita (gallons)
Poverty rate (percent below poverty
level)
Violent crime arrests per 1000, underage 25
Property crime arrests per 1000,
under age 25
Murder arrests per 1000, under age
25
Violent crime arrests per 1000, age
25 and over
Property crime arrests per 1000, age
25 and overMurder arrests per 1000, age 25 and
over

6.73
48.04
0.09

2.81
11.46
0.04

.88
4.60
0.02

77.11
132.26
51.00
2.83
2.85

83.18
116.46
66.57
1.26
0.64

66.13
86.89
55.39
0.86
0.27

23207

3408

1361

7242

2905

1364

6.15
23.03

1.55
3.32

1.21
1.24

13.80

3.51

1.64

3.18

1.46

0.49

12.36

3.76

1.44

0.11

0.06

0.03

2.04

1.06

0.34

4.82

1.58

0.65

0.06

0.03

0.01

All values reported are means of annual, state-level observations for the period 1985–1997 with thefollowing exceptions. Arrest data cover the years 1985–1996, and AFDC generosity data are for the years
1985–1998. The police and prisons data are once-lagged, and thus correspond to the years 1984 –1996. The
values reported in the table are population weighted averages. The effective abortion rate is a weighted
average of the abortion rates for each cohort born in a state, with weights determined by the percentage ofarrests by age for a given crime category in the United States in 1985 as shown in equation (1). All summary
statistics are based on 663 observations, except where otherwise noted. Because of missing data, arrest
statistics are based on 574 observations, compared with a theoretical maximum of 612. AFDC statistics are
based on 714 observations. See Data Appendix for further details.

ciated with declining crime. These estimated effects of abortion
are highly statistically signicant—more so than any other variable included in the analysis. The real-world magnitude implied

404

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICSTABLE IVPANEL-DATA ESTIMATES OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEENABORTION RATES AND CRIME
ln(Violent
crime percapita)ln(Property
crime percapita)ln(Murder per
capita)Variable

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

“Effective” abortion rate
(3 100)ln(prisoners per capita)(t 2 1)ln(police per capita)(t 2 1)
State unemployment rate
(percent unemployed)ln(state income percapita)Poverty rate (percent
below poverty line)
AFDC generosity (t 215) (3 1000)
Shall-issue concealed
weapons law
Beer consumption percapita (gallons)

2 .137(.023)—

2 .129(.024)
2 .027(.044)
2 .028(.045).069(.505).049(.213)
2 .000(.002).008(.005)
2 .004(.012).004(.003)

2 .095(.018)—

2 .091(.018)
2 .159(.036)
2 .049(.045)
1.310(.389).084(.162)
2 .001(.001).002(.004).039(.011).004(.003)

2 .108(.036)—

2 .121(.047)
2 .231(.080)
2 .300(.109).968(.794)
2 .098(.465)
2 .005(.004)
2 .000(.000)
2 .015(.032).006(.008)

.942

.990

.992

.914

R2

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
.938

—
—
—
—
—
—
—

—
—
—
—
—
—
—

.918

The dependent variable is the log in the per capita crime rate named at the top of each pair of columns.
The rst column in each pair presents results from specications in which the only additional covariates arestate- and year-xed effects. The second column presents results using the full specication. The data set iscomprised of annual state-level observations (including the District of Columbia) for the period 1985–1997.
The number of observations is equal to 663 in all columns. State- and year-xed effects are included in all
specications. The prison and police variables are once-lagged to minimize endogeneity. Estimation is
performed using a two-step procedure. In the rst step, weighted least squares estimates are obtained, withweights determined by state population. In the second step, a panel data generalization of the Prais-Winsten
correction for serial correlation developed by Bhargava et al. [1982] is implemented. Standard errors are inparentheses. Data sources for all variables are described in the Data Appendix.

by the coefcients on abortion is substantial. An increase in theeffective abortion rate of 100 per 1000 live births (the meaneffective abortion rate in 1997 for violent crime is 180 with astandard deviation of 96 across states) is associated with a reduction of 12 percent in murder, 13 percent in violent crime, and 9
percent in property crime. In Table II, comparing the states in the
top third with respect to abortions to the states in the bottom
third, our parameter estimates imply that crime fell an additional
16 –25 percent in the former states by 1997 due to greater usage

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

405

of abortion. One additional abortion is associated with a reductionof 0.23 property crimes, 0.04 violent crimes, and 0.004 murders
annually when a cohort is at its peak crime age. Comparing theseestimates to average criminal propensities among 18 –24 year
olds, those on the margin for being aborted are roughly four times
more criminal. These estimates are roughly consistent with, butsomewhat larger than, the back-of-the-envelope predictions in
Section III.
The other coefcients in the model appear plausibly estimated. The elasticities of incarceration and police with respect tocrime all carry the expected sign, with prison associated withsignicant reductions in property crime and murder, and police
associated with signicant reductions in murder.28 A higher state
unemployment rate is associated with signicant increases inproperty crime, but not violent crime, consistent with previous
research [Freeman 1995]. The three other measures of state
economic conditions—per capita income, the poverty rate, and
AFDC generosity (lagged fteen years to roughly correspond withthe early years of life of the current teenagers) do not systematically affect crime. Shall-issue concealed carry laws appear tosignicantly increase the amount of property crime, but have noeffect on violent crime or murder. Finally, beer consumption is
weakly linked with higher crime rates, but never signicantly so.
Table V investigates the sensitivity of the abortion coefcients to a range of alternative specications. We take the specications with the full set of controls in Table IV as a baseline.
The abortion coefcients from those regressions are reported in
the top row of Table V. Each row of the table represents a
different specication. The sensitivity of the results to large
states (since the regressions are population weighted) and stateswith very high or low abortion rates is examined rst. Removing
New York reduces the estimates for violent crime and murder,
while eliminating California increases the abortion coefcient for
those two crime categories. Dropping Washington, DC, which isan extreme outlier (with an abortion rate over four times thenational average) increases the estimated impact of abortion.
28. The estimated effects of incarceration are consistent with previous correlational panel-data studies (e.g., Marvell and Moody [1994]). The prison coefcients obtained here are approximately the same magnitude as Levitt [1996] nds
when correcting for the endogeneity of the prison population using prison overcrowding litigation as an instrument. Levitt [1997] nds a negative impact ofpolice on crime using electoral cycles in large cities as an instrument for the sizeof the police force.

406

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICSTABLE VSENSITIVITY OF ABORTION COEFFICIENTS TO ALTERNATIVE SPECIFICATIONS
Coefcient on the “effective” abortion ratevariable when the dependent variable isSpecication
Baseline
Exclude New York
Exclude California
Exclude District of Columbia
Exclude New York, California,
and District of Columbia
Adjust “effective” abortion rate
for cross-state mobility
Include control for ow ofimmigrants
Include state-specic trends
Include region-year interactions
Unweighted
Unweighted, exclude District ofColumbia
Unweighted, exclude District ofColumbia, California, andNew York
Include control for overall
fertility rate (t 2 20)
Long difference estimates using
only data from 1985 and 1997

ln (Violent
crime percapita)ln (Property
crime percapita)ln (Murder
per capita)

2 .129 (.024)
2 .097 (.030)
2 .145 (.025)
2 .149 (.025)

2 .091 (.018)
2 .097 (.021)
2 .080 (.018)
2 .112 (.019)

2 .121 (.047)
2 .063 (.045)
2 .151 (.054)
2 .159 (.053)

2 .175 (.035)

2 .125 (.017)

2 .273 (.052)

2 .148 (.027)

2 .099 (.020)

2 .140 (.055)

2 .115 (.024)
2 .078 (.080)
2 .142 (.033)
2 .046 (.029)

2 .063 (.018).143 (.033)
2 .084 (.023)
2 .022 (.023)

2 .103 (.047)
2 .379 (.105)
2 .123 (.053).040 (.054)

2 .149 (.029)

2 .107 (.015)

2 .140 (.055)

2 .157 (.037)

2 .110 (.017)

2 .166 (.075)

2 .127 (.025)

2 .093 (.019)

2 .123 (.047)

2 .109 (.054)

2 .077 (.034)

2 .089 (.077)

Results in this table are variations on the specications reported in columns (2), (4), and (6) of Table IV.
The top row of the current table is the baseline specication that is presented in Table IV. Except where
noted, all specications are estimated using an annual, state-level panel of data for the years 1985–1997.
Standard errors (in parentheses) are corrected for serial correlation using the Bhargava et al. [1982] two-stepprocedure for panel data. The specication that corrects for cross-state mobility does so by using an effective
abortion rate that is a weighted average of the abortion rates in the state of birth for fteen year-olds residing
in a state in the PUMS 5 percent sample of the 1990 census. Controls for the ow of immigrants are derived
from changes in the foreign-born population, based on the decennial censuses and 1997 estimates, linearlyinterpolated. Region-year interactions are for the nine census regions.

Dropping all three of those high abortion states leads to higher
estimates across the board, suggesting that the crime-reducing
impact of abortion may have decreasing returns.
Omitted variables may also be a concern in the regressions
given the relatively limited set of covariates available. One crude
way of addressing this question is to include region-year interaction terms in an attempt to absorb geographically correlated

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

407

shocks. The abortion coefcients are not substantially affected bythis approach.
Since we are measuring the effect of abortions in a state on
crime in that state up to a quarter century later, the issue ofcross-state mobility should be considered. Theoretically, the presence of such cross-state movements will tend to systematicallybias the abortion coefcient toward zero since the true effective
abortion rate is measured with error by our proxy that ignores
mobility. In order to adjust for migration, we determined thestate of birth and state of residence for all fteen year-olds in the1990 PUMS 5 percent sample. Using this information, we recalculated effective abortion rates as weighted average abortion
rates by the actual state of birth of fteen year-olds residing in astate. For all three crime categories the estimated impact ofabortion increases with the migration correction, although thechanges are not large.
We perform a range of other sensitivity checks. Controlling
for the ow of immigrants to a state somewhat reduces theestimated effect of abortion on crime (particularly for property
crime), but it does not change their signicance. When we include
state-specic time trends, the estimates change somewhat erratically, and the standard errors double for murder and property
crime and triple for violent crime. Unweighted panel data regressions (as opposed to population weighted) yield sharply smallercoefcients, but this is exclusively due to Washington, DC as an
outlier (owing in all likelihood to mismeasurement in the DC
abortion rate). Excluding District of Columbia alone, or District ofColumbia in combination with California and New York, leads tocoefcients from the unweighted regressions that are greaterthan the baseline estimates.
Including controls for lagged changes in overall fertility rates
for the same era as our abortion measures has almost no impact
on our estimated coefcients. Regressions using only the 1985
and 1997 endpoints of our sample (“long-differences”) yield coefcients similar to, although somewhat smaller than, the baselinecoefcients for the overall panel.
V. THE IMPACT OF ABORTION ON ARRESTS BY A GE OF OFFENDER
The preceding section highlighted a strong empirical correlation between abortion rates after Roe v. Wade and crimechanges in recent years. In this section we explore the extent to408

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

which arrest patterns substantiate a possible causal interpretation of these results. In particular, if legalized abortion is thereason for the decline in crime, then one would expect that decreases in crime should be concentrated among those cohorts bornafter abortion is legalized.29
Testing that hypothesis is complicated by the fact that theage of criminals is not directly observable. The age of arrestees,
however, is reported.30 Thus, we can analyze whether arrests bycohort are a function of the abortion rate.
The basic specications used to explain state arrest rates by
age category are identical to the crime regressions in the preceding section, except that the dependent variable is the (natural logof the) arrest rate per capita for those under age 25 rather thanthe overall crime rate for all ages, and 1997 is excluded from thesample because the necessary arrest data are not yet available.31
Results from the estimation are reported in columns 1–3 of Table
VI. Two specications per crime category are presented: the top
row of results just includes the effective abortion variable andyear- and state-xed effects, while the bottom row adds to these
the remaining covariates that were used in Table IV above. Because the dependent variable is denominated by the population
under age 25, the abortion coefcients only reect changes inarrest rates per person. If the impact of abortion was solely
through changes in cohort size, then the per capita specications
we run would yield zero coefcients on the abortion variable. In
all six cases, lagged abortion rates are associated with decreases
in arrests per capita by those under the age of 25, with estimates

29. It is possible that crime by older cohorts may be affected indirectly byabortion. For instance, if there are fewer criminals in younger cohorts, this may
increase additional criminal opportunities for older individuals (particularly inactivities such as drug distribution where there may be easy substitutability). On
the other hand, to the extent that lower crime by the young increases the criminal
justice resources available per older criminal [Sah 1991], crime among older
cohorts may also fall. Moreover, as noted above, if abortion results in smallerfamily sizes and a concomitant increase in parental resources per child, the effectof legalization could be observed in crime reductions for older siblings. All of theseeffects are likely to be of second-order magnitude, however.
30. Arrest data may not accurately reect criminal activity for a number ofreasons. Greenwood [1995] argues that juvenile crime is more likely to be committed in groups so that the arrest frequency of juveniles overstates the true
fraction of crime they commit. Also, if there are differences across criminals in
avoiding detection, arrests will be skewed toward the less procient criminals.
31. We use an age cutoff of 25 because it is approximately the age of theoldest cohorts affected by legalized abortion. Arrest data are available by single
year of age up to age 24, but only in ve-year groupings thereafter. The resultspresented are not sensitive to small perturbations of the age groupings.

2 .044(.030)

2 .095(.029)

Violent
crime

2 .054(.023)

2 .085(.023)

Propertycrime

2 .180(.062)

2 .214(.051)

Murder.033(.046).022(.054)

Violent
crime.008(.031)

2 .019(.037)

Propertycrime

2 .036(.050)

2 .034(.037)

Murderln (arrests per person, age
25+ )2 .062(.034)

2 .116(.042)

Violent
crime

2 .063(.019)

2 .066(.023)

Propertycrime

2 .137(.046)

2 .180(.034)

Murderln (arrests per person, underage 25) minus ln (arrests perperson, age 25+ )Regressions are identical to those in Table IV, except that the dependent variables are arrest rates broken down by age category instead of overall crime rates. The top row of
the table presents results from specications in which the only additional covariates are state- and year-xed effects. The bottom row of the table presents results using the full
specication. Covariates included in the bottom row are once-lagged police and prisoners per capita in logs, state unemployment rate, logged state income per capita, the poverty rate,
lagged AFDC generosity, shall-issue concealed weapons law, and beer consumption per capita. The regressions use annual state-level data for the period 1985–1996 (1997 arrest databy age are not yet available). Because of missing data, the number of observations varies across columns between 555 and 557, compared with a theoretical maximum of 612. Stateand year-xed effects are included in all specications. The prison and police variables are once-lagged to minimize endogeneity. Estimation is performed using a two-step procedure.
In the rst step, weighted least squares estimates are obtained, with weights determined by state population. In the second step, a panel data generalization of the Prais-Winsten
correction for serial correlation developed by Bhargava et al. [1982] is implemented. Standard errors are in parentheses.

Effective abortion rate (3100), including full set ofcovariates

Effective abortion rate (3100) only, no covariates
includedSpecicationln (arrest per person, underage 25)TABLE VI
THE IMPACT OF ABORTION RATES ON ARRESTS BY AGE (ALL VALUES IN THE TABLE ARE C OEFFICIENTS ON THE EFFECTIVE ABORTION RATE
(3 100), OTHER COEFFICIENTS ARE NOT REPORTED)LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

409

410

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

ranging between 2 .044 and 2 .214. The abortion coefcient isstatistically signicant in ve out of six specications.
If the arrest data are measured without error and there areno spillovers between the crime of the young and the old, then wewould not expect legalized abortion to affect the crime of thoseborn prior to the law change. Columns 4 – 6, which relate arrest
rates of older cohorts to abortion rates, thus provide a natural
specication test for our hypothesis. In none of the crime categories does the abortion rate variable have a statistically signicant
impact on arrests of older cohorts. In three instances the coefcient is positive; in the other three cases the coefcient is negative. All of the estimates are much smaller in magnitude than was
the case for arrests of those under the age of 25. The last threecolumns of the table show “difference in differences” estimates of
the impact of abortion on cohorts born after legalization relative
to those born before. In all cases, the coefcients are similar to
those in the rst three columns of the table. This result strengthens the causal interpretation of the abortion coefcients on thearrest patterns of the young.
The implied magnitude of the abortion effects on arrests issmaller than the parallel estimates presented in the preceding
section analyzing crime rates, but is of the same order of magnitude. On average, about half of those arrested are under the ageof 25.32 Thus, to generate the crime reduction in Table IV requires
coefcients on young arrests that are twice as large as the coefcients on overall crime. With the exception of murder, the arrest
coefcients are actually smaller than the crime coefcients. Partof this discrepancy may be attributable to the fact that the arrest
regressions reect only reductions in per capita crime by theyoung, not smaller youthful cohorts, but this can explain only aportion of the gap. It remains an open question as to whether thisdiscrepancy represents a partially spurious relationship in thecrime regressions, measurement error in the arrest data, or a
relationship between crime and arrests that is not proportional.
It is important to stress, however, that while the magnitude of theeffects differs between the crime and arrest regressions, the basic
story with respect to abortion is present in both cases.33
32. Over the sample period, those under the age of 25 accounted for an
average of 49 percent of violent arrests, 62 percent of property arrests, and 48
percent of murder arrests.
33. We replicated the sensitivity tests that were presented in Table V for thebaseline Table IV regressions using Table VI as the baseline estimates. These411

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

As a further test of our hypothesis, we analyze arrest rates bystate by single year of age. These data are available for the ages
15 and 24 covering the period 1985 through 1996. If abortion
legalization reduces crime, then we should see the reduction
begin with, say, fteen year-olds about sixteen years after legalization, then extend to sixteen year-olds a year later, and so on.
Because we observe many cohorts in a given state and year, we
are able to include controls for state-year variation. Thus, unlike
the preceding table, where state-year variation was our source ofidentication, in the analysis that follows our estimates are basedon differences in abortion rates and crime rates across cohorts
within a given state and year. The regression we run takes thefollowing form:(3)ln ( ARRESTSstb ) 5

b 1 ABORTsb 1

g s1

l tb 1u st 1e stb,

where s, t, and b index state, year, and birth cohort, respectively.
The variable ARRESTS is the raw number of arrests for a given
crime. Unlike previous tables, we do not divide arrests by population to create per capita rates because of the absence of reliablemeasures of state population by single year of age. As our measure of the abortion rate for a particular cohort, we use theabortion rate in the current state of residence in the calendar year
most likely to have preceded the arrestees birth.34 Cross-statemigration will not be captured by this measure, but the results inearlier sections suggest that the impact of migration on the estimates is small (and that any migration correction would, if anything, strengthen our results). Because the unit of observation in
the analysis is a state-birth cohort and cohorts are observed
repeatedly over time, we will include controls for age, national
year-cohort interactions, state-year interactions, and (in somecases) state-age interactions. We cannot, however, include state-

regressions again revealed the robustness of the coefcient estimates, exhibiting
patterns similar to the sensitivity analysis for the full sample. These results areavailable from the authors on request.
34. For example, we use the abortion rate in 1980 to reect the abortion
exposure of fteen year-olds arrested in 1996. Because the arrest data cover acalendar year, there is a possible 730-day window into which an arrestee’s date ofbirth may fall (i.e., an arrest is made on January 1 of someone who is 16 years and
364 days old versus an arrest is made on December 31 of someone who is 16 years
and 1 day old). With a six-to-seven-month lag from likely time of abortion to timeof birth, this 730-day window is centered on the calendar year that we use tocapture abortion exposure. More complicated attempts to measure abortion exposure yield estimates similar to the ones we present.

412

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

birth cohort interactions without absorbing all of the variation in
the abortion exposure of a state-birth cohort.
Table VII presents the results of this analysis for violent
crime and property crime. There are too few murder arrests per
single age category per state to enable us to provide similar
estimates for murder. We present estimates restricting the impact of abortion to be constant over the entire age range (oddcolumns) and allowing the impact of abortion to vary by age (evencolumns). Some of the regressions include state-age interactions,others just have state-xed effects. All of the specications include year-age interactions to control for national-level uctuations in the age-crime prole.35 In all cases, standard errors havebeen corrected to reect correlation over time in a given birthcohort’s observations.
The top row of Table VII presents estimates restricting theabortion coefcient to be constant across the ages 15–24. In all
instances, the coefcient is strongly signicantly negative, implying that higher abortion rates around the time a cohort is born areassociated with lower arrest rates in their teens and twenties.
When the abortion coefcient is allowed to vary by age, 38 of the
40 parameter estimates are negative; more than two-thirds ofthese estimates are statistically signicant at the .05 level. The
greatest impact of abortion appears to occur in the age range
18 –22. The effects are generally weakest for the youngest ages inthe sample.
The coefcients in this table are not directly comparable tothose in the preceding tables. Because we are analyzing arrests
by single year of age in this table, we are able to use actual
abortion rates as opposed to the effective abortion rates that
average over many cohorts. Comparing states in the top third andbottom third with respect to abortion frequency, the gap between
those sets of states in actual abortion rates was about 350 per1000 births. Given the estimates in the top row of Table VII, this
implies that arrest rates of 15–24 year-olds in the high abortion
states are estimated to have fallen between 5 and 14 percent
relative to the low abortion states.

35. For instance, the arrival of crack appears to have temporarily raised theviolent crime propensities, particularly among youths.

—

—

—

—

Age = 21

Age = 22

Age = 23

Age = 24.985
5,737
State p Ageinteractions

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

2 .028(.004).985
5,737
State p Ageinteractions

2 .008(.010)
2 .007(.008)
2 .021(.007)
2 .039(.007)
2 .043(.007)
2 .043(.007)
2 .039(.008)
2 .024(.009)
2 .026(.013)
2 .016(.020)—

State-xed

.967
5,740

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

2 .040(.004)

State-xed

.968
5,740

2 .037(.007)
2 .043(.006)
2 .042(.006)
2 .053(.005)
2 .050(.005)
2 .038(.006)
2 .028(.006)
2 .020(.008)
2 .015(.011)
2 .024(.019)

—

.984
5,740
State p Ageinteractions

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

2 .025(.003)ln (Property arrests)

.984
5,740
State p Ageinteractions

2 .005(.008)
2 .011(.006)
2 .013(.005)
2 .023(.005)
2 .036(.006)
2 .035(.006)
2 .037(.006)
2 .032(.009)
2 .030(.013)
2 .047(.018)—

Results in the table are coefcients from estimation of equation (3). The unit of observation in the regression is annual arrests by state by single year of age. The sample covers the period
1985–1996 for ages 15–24. The abortion rate for a cohort of age a in state s in year y is the number of abortions per 1000 live births in state s in year y 2 a 2 1. Note that this is the actual
abortion rate, rather than the “effective” abortion rate used in preceding tables. Therefore, the coefcients in this table are not directly comparable to those of earlier tables. If data wereavailable for all states, years, and ages, the total number of observations would be 6120. Due to missing arrest data and occasional zero values for arrests, the actual number of observations
is somewhat smaller. A complete set of year-birth cohort interactions are included in all specications to capture national changes in the shape of the age-crime prole over time. State-year
interactions are also included. Some specications include state-xed effects; in other specications, a complete set of state-age interactions is included. Estimation is weighted least squares,
with weights determined by total state population. Standard errors have been corrected to account for correlation over time within a given birth cohort in a particular state. Such a correction
is necessary because the abortion rate for any given cohort is xed over time, but multiple observations corresponding to different years of age are included in the regression. Results formurder are not included in the table because murder is infrequent, leading to many zeros when analyzed at the level of state and single year of age.

State-xed—

Age = 20

State-xed—

Age = 19

.972
5,737

—

Age = 18.018(.008).008(.007)
2 .010(.006)
2 .035(.004)
2 .040(.005)
2 .043(.006)
2 .039(.009)
2 .028(.013)
2 .031(.023)
2 .027(.040)—ln (Violent arrests)

.972
5,737

—

R2
Number of observations
State-xed effects or State-age
interactions?

——

Age = 17100) interacted with

Abortion rate (3Age = 15

2 .015(.003)

Age = 16

100)

Abortion rate (3TABLE VII
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ABORTION RATES AND ARREST RATES, BY SINGLE YEAR OF AGE

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

413

414

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

VI. CONCLUSION
We know that teenagers, unmarried women, and poor womenare most likely to deem a pregnancy to be either mistimed or
unwanted, and that a large proportion of these unintended pregnancies will be terminated through abortion.36 According to a
recent National Academy report, there appears to be “a causal
and adverse effect of early childbearing on the health and socialand economic well-being of children; this effect is over and above
the important effects of background disadvantages” [Institute ofMedicine 1995, p. 58]. Moreover, unintended pregnancies areassociated with poorer prenatal care, greater smoking and drinking during pregnancy, and lower birthweights. Consequently, thelife chances of children who are born only because their mothers
could not have an abortion are considerably dampened relative tobabies who were wanted at the time of conception. The drop in the
proportion of unwanted births during the 1970s and early 1980s
appears to be the result of the increasing availability and resort
to abortion.
The evidence we present is consistent with legalized abortion
reducing crime rates with a twenty-year lag. Our results suggestthat an increase of 100 abortions per 1000 live births reduces acohort’s crime by roughly 10 percent. Extrapolating our results
out of sample to a counterfactual in which abortion remained
illegal and the number of illegal abortions performed remained
steady at the 1960s level, we estimate that (with average national
effective abortion rates in 1997 for all three crimes ranging frombetween 142 and 252) crime was almost 15–25 percent lower in1997 than it would have been absent legalized abortion.
These estimates suggest that legalized abortion is a primary
explanation for the large drops in murder, property crime, andviolent crime that our nation has experienced over the last decade. Indeed, legalized abortion may account for as much as
one-half of the overall crime reduction. Assuming that this claim
is correct, existing estimates of the costs of crime (e.g., Miller,
Cohen, and Rossman [1993] suggest that the social benet to
reduced crime as a result of abortion may be on the order of $30
billion dollars annually. Increased imprisonment between 1991
36. Roughly 75 percent of never-married women who unintentionally become
pregnant will opt for abortion. Overall, almost exactly half of all unintended
pregnancies—whether mistimed or unwanted—will be terminated by abortion[Institute of Medicine 1995, pp. 41–47].

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

415

and 1997 (the prison population rose about 50 percent over thisperiod) lowered crime 10 percent based on an elasticity of 2 .20.
Thus, together abortion and prison growth explain much, if notall, of the decrease in crime.37
Roughly half of the crimes committed in the United States
are done by individuals born prior to the legalization of abortion.
As these older cohorts age out of criminality and are replaced byyounger offenders born after abortion became legal, we would
predict that crime rates will continue to fall. When a steady stateis reached roughly twenty years from now, the impact of abortion
will be roughly twice as great as the impact felt so far. Our results
suggest that all else equal, legalized abortion will account for
persistent declines of 1 percent a year in crime over the next two
decades. To the extent that the Hyde Amendment effectively
restricted access to abortion, however, this prediction might beoverly optimistic.
While falling crime rates are no doubt a positive development, our drawing a link between falling crime and legalized
abortion should not be misinterpreted as either an endorsementof abortion or a call for intervention by the state in the fertility
decisions of women. Furthermore, equivalent reductions in crime
could in principle be obtained through alternatives for abortion,such as more effective birth control, or providing better environments for those children at greatest risk for future crime.
DATA APPENDIX
Crime and Police
All crime and police data used in the analysis are fromFederal Bureau of Investigation Crime in the United States [annual], except the victimization data in Figure II, which are summarized annually in Bureau of Justice Statistics Sourcebook of
Criminal Justice Statistics [annual].
Abortion
All abortion data are from Bureau of the Census UnitedStates Statistical Abstract [annual]. The primary source for the
37. This is not to say that other factors did not also contribute to the decline
in crime. To the extent that there were other forces pushing crime higher, such as
crack, then the set of factors leading to reduced crime will explain more than 100
percent of the observed decrease in crime.

416

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

abortion data is an annual survey conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Prisoners
Data on number of prisoners are from Correctional Populations in the United States, published annually by the Bureau of
Justice Statistics.
Population by Age
These data are from Estimates for the United States, Regions,
Divisions, and States by 5 Year Age Groups and Sex: Annual Time
Series Estimates, U. S. Census Bureau [annual].
Poverty
Persons Below Poverty Level, by State, taken from Bureau of
the Census United States Statistical Abstract [annual].
Unemployment
Figures used represent the percent unemployed among civilian noninstitutional population sixteen years and older, withtotal unemployment estimates based on the Current Population
Survey, taken from Bureau of the Census, United States Statistical Abstract [annual].
Fertility
The number of live births per 1000 population, taken from
Bureau of the Census, United States Statistical Abstract[annual].
IncomePer capita state personal income, converted to 1997 dollars
using the Consumer Price Index, from Bureau of the Census,
United States Statistical Abstract [annual].
AFDC Generosity
Public Assistance Payments to Families with DependentChildren, from Bureau of the Census, United States Statistical
Abstract [annual]. The data reported in the Statistical Abstract
are the average monthly payment per family receiving aid. That
number is multiplied by twelve to obtain a yearly average, andthen converted into 1997 dollars using the Consumer Price Index.

LEGALIZED ABORTION AND CRIME

417

Nondiscretionary Concealed Handgun Law
Indicates the year in which the state enacted a law requiring
local law enforcement authorities to grant concealed weapons
permits to anyone meeting certain preestablished criteria. Data
come from Lott and Mustard [1997].
Beer Consumption
Consumption of Malt Beverages from the Beer Institute’s
Brewer’s Almanac [1995, 1998]. In gallons consumed per capita.
Cross-State Migration
The corrections for cross-state migration are based on a comparison of the state of birth and current state of residence offteen year-olds in the 1990 Census Public Use Microdata 5
percent sample.
Foreign-Born Population
Prior to 1994, the decennial census was the only source ofdata on the number of foreign-born individuals living in the
United States. Data from the three Census years and 1997 wereused to interpolate intervening years. All data are from Bureau of
the Census United States Statistical Abstract [annual].
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Alan Guttmacher Institute, Abortion Fact Book, 1992 Edition, Stanley Henshaw
and Jennifer Van Vort, eds. (New York, NY: Alan Guttmacher Institute,1992).
——, “An Analysis of Pre-1973 State Laws on Abortion,” mimeo, March 1989.
Angrist, Joshua, and William Evans, “Schooling and Labor Market Consequencesof the 1970 State Abortion Reforms,” National Bureau of Economic Research,Working Paper No. 5406, January 1996.
Barber, Jennifer, William Axinn, and Arland Thornton, “Unwanted Childbearing,
Health, and Mother-Child Relationships,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior, XL (September 1999), 231–257.
Beck, Allen, et al., “Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991,” Bureau of Justice
Statistics Bulletin, NCJ 136949, March 1993.
Becker, Gary, A Treatise on the Family (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
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Bhargava, A., L. Franzini, et al., “Serial Correlation and the Fixed Effects Model,”Review of Economic Studies, XLIX (1982), 533–549.
Blank, Rebecca, C. C. George, and R. A. London, “State Abortion Rates: The
Impact of Policies, Providers, Politics, Demographics, and Economic Environment,” Journal of Health Economics, XV (1996), 513–553.

418

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, Jeffrey Roth, and Christy Visher, eds.,
Criminal Careers and “Career Criminals” (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1986).
Blumstein, Alfred, and Richard Rosenfeld, “Explaining Recent Trends in U. S.
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Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman, eds., The Crime Drop in America (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Bouza, Anthony V., The Police Mystique: An Insider’s Look at Cops, Crime, and the
Criminal Justice System (New York, NY: Plenum Press, 1990).
Bureau of the Census, “Population Estimates for the U. S., Regions, Divisions, andStates by 5-year Age Groups and Sex,” Population Estimates Program(annual).
——, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: U. S. Government
Printing Ofce, annual).
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Correctional Populations in the U. S. (Washington,
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