http://www.isteve.com/abortion.htm
That this claim is still so often credulously repeated tells you something about how tied to reality the chattering classes are.
The above referenced Steve Sailer also offers a decent unempirical hypothesis about the decline of crime: Technology has made it way harder to do much bad stuff without getting caught. Cell phones and surveillance cameras and better police tech make crime much riskier than it was.
I also suspect everybody's fatter, older, and more couch-potato than they used to be. Obese slobs with 200 channels are too lazy to go gang-banging.
Could you point us to some evidence of your claim?
The reason I try not to do it online though (or in person with strangers) is because I have marked that when you use profanity with strangers (especially online) it tends to make the discussion more rancorous because people focus on the profanity instead of the content. It does not seem to matter whether it was meant as an insult, or simply as an "emotional multiplier".
I have certainly realized that I used do it, so may be it's just a bad data point, weighted heavily!
So that's my perspective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio...
– Increased reliance on prisons
– Increased number of police
– The bursting of the crack bubble
– The legalization of abortion
The NYT article says that incarceration rates have dropped, which would eliminate the first factor. I wonder how the other 3 correlate with the recent drop in crime. It's unlikely the number of police have increased, given the recession. Instead of, or in addition to, crack, I am assuming you may have to consider other drugs like Meth (?).
Levitt et al. also presented evidence that a strong economy does not cause a drop in crime, so the challenge to that thesis, mentioned in the NYT article, is not new.
[1] http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/03/16/lets-do-the-crime-dro...