The legalisation of abortion resulted in lower crime rates decades later.
The hypothesis that legalizing abortion leads to lower crime rates decades later remains heavily contested, with some researchers finding strong statistical support while others report that the association fails robustness checks and alternative tests.
The claim is a specific empirical hypothesis that has been subject to extensive debate in economics and criminology. While prominent early studies and recent follow-ups argue that abortion legalization substantially reduced crime, several other researchers have published papers challenging these findings, demonstrating that the relationship often breaks down under robustness checks, alternative geographic data, or standardized criminological tests. The literature is thus genuinely divided, making CONTESTED the appropriate verdict.
Steven D. Levitt. Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not. 2004. https://doi.org/10.1257/089533004773563485
Paper 0 concludes that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s was one of the primary factors explaining the sharp drop in US crime rates in the 1990s.
Graham Farrell, Nick Tilley, Andromachi Tseloni. Why the Crime Drop?. 2014. https://doi.org/10.1086/678081
Paper 2 examines multiple explanations for the crime drop and finds that the abortion hypothesis fails to pass standardized empirical tests compared to security hypotheses.
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John J Donohue, Steven Levitt. The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime over the Last Two Decades. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahaa008
Paper 9 utilizes post-publication data and finds continued empirical support for the original Donohue and Levitt prediction that legalized abortion significantly reduced crime rates over subsequent decades.
Graham Farrell. Five tests for a theory of the crime drop. 2013. https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-7680-2-5
Paper 7 subjects the abortion-crime hypothesis to rigorous testing and reports that it fails multiple validity tests.
Leo H. Kahane, David Paton, Robert Simmons. The Abortion–Crime Link: Evidence from England and Wales. 2007. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0335.2007.00627.x
Paper 10 tests the abortion-crime link using data from England and Wales and finds that the negative association breaks down under robustness checks and conviction data.
Ted Joyce. Further Tests of Abortion and Crime. 2004. https://doi.org/10.3386/w10564
Paper 11 finds little evidence for a causal relationship between legalized abortion and reduced crime when analyzing specific post-legalization cohort transitions and racial demographic differences.
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