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I don’t dispute that Bennett seemed to both reject and then embrace the race/abortion/crime argument in Freakonomics.

My post was about the fact that Levitt claimed that his theory wasn’t about race at all.

But in fact race figures importantly in the QJE article.

One point though.

Levitt is neither politically correct nor a coward, but he should, rather than appearing to distance himself from Bennett, have admitted that Bennett was simply adopting the empirical analysis that he and Donohue first laid out.

See, here’s the problem that I have with Bennett’s comments. He did not adopt the empirical analysis UNTIL he included race in the equation.

Remember, this is what he said.

BENNETT: you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well –
CALLER: Well, I don’t think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don’t think it is either, I don’t think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don’t know. But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could � if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

See, at first he rejects it and then he accepts a slight variant on the same idea.

Broken out as a logic problem it looks something like this:

IAR = Increased Abortion Rate
ABAR = Absolute Black Abortion Rate
DCR = Decreased Crime Rate

Bennett first said IAR ≠DCR
Bennett then said ABAR = DCR
However, all things being equal, ABAR = IAR
Therefore, IAR must = DCR

I have no doubt Bennett did not mean what he said, but he committed a pretty glaring logic flaw and people are excusing it because there is a link between blacks and crime. Well, of course there is, but as Levitt pointed out in that same blog article in response to Bennett’s statements.

7) There is one thing I would take Bennett to task for: first saying that he doesn’t believe our abortion-crime hypothesis but then revealing that he does believe it with his comments about black babies. You can’t have it both ways.

Also, Levitt isn’t covering his butt. Note he talks specifically about homicide in his statment on the blog.

Importantly, however, once you control for income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is, the importance of race disappears for all crimes except homicide.

And the paper that you mention talks specifcally about homicide rates.

Given that homicide rates of black youths are roughly nine times higher than those of white youths, racial differences in the fertility effects of abortion 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 average criminal 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.

Levitt isn’t covering his butt because his butt is already covered with data and previous statements.

Sorry John. I don’t think the title of your post is fair and I’d hope you would amend it.

In fact, the authors of Freakonomics made explicitly racial arguments in economics journal articles. They said nothing remotely racist, but they did stress the empirical connection between race and abortion and crime.

A righteous (moral) man would show more concern for the implication of his statement.

Agreed, and I wish Bennett would. I don’t think he will, but I wish he’d realize the impact of what he said.

Let’s hope he does.

He is, however, a self righteous man.

A righteous (moral) man would show more concern for the implication of his statement.