Economic analysis of social behavior has often been criticized for its neglect of the roles of preferences, values and cultural influences. The recent book by Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy listed among the references is an attempt to integrate these factors into the analysis.
2
See Georgellis and Wall (1992).
3
See Whittington, Alm and Peters (1990) and Georgellis and Wall (1992).
4
See Grogger and Bronars (2001).
5
See Donohue and Levitt (2001) and Barro (1999).
6
Countering Donohue and Levitt's work, John Lott and John Whitley argue that the legalization of abortion has meant slightly higher murder rates. In their model of fertility, the legalization of abortion can lead to more out-of-wedlock births. Because single-parent homes have fewer resources to devote to child-raising, this means a negative quality effect, and, therefore, more crimes.
REFERENCES
Barro, Robert J. "Does Abortion Lower the Crime Rate?" Business Week (September 27, 1999), p. 30.
Becker, Gary S. A Treatise on the Family (Enlarged Edition). (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Becker, Gary S. and Kevin M. Murphy. Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social Environment. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Donohue, John J. and Steven D. Levitt. "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2001), pp. 379-420.
Georgellis, Yannis and Howard J. Wall. "The Fertility Effect of Dependent Tax Exemptions: Estimates for the United States," Applied Economics (October 1992), pp. 1139-45.
Grogger, Jeff and Stephen G. Bronars. "The Effect of Welfare Payments on the Marriage and Fertility Behavior of Unwed Mothers: Results from a Twins Experiment," Journal of Political Economy (June 2001), pp. 529-45.
Lott, John R. and John E. Whitley. "Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births," Yale Law School Program for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy, Working Paper # 254, 2001.
Whittington, Leslie A., James Alm and H. Elizabeth Peters. "Fertility and the Personal Exemption: Implicit Pronatalist Policy in the United States," American Economic Review (June 1990), pp. 545-56.