Summary Of Levitt's Freakonomics

Freakonomics is an economist’s viewpoint on the events and issues that we encounter and hear about every day. Levitt uses his many years of experience as an economist to address topics ranging from abortion to the power of information. He looks at the statistics behind each topic and makes an informed analysis, generally not following popular belief about it. Levitt foresees and counters arguments that people may have against what he is stating. His counter arguments are filled with data and statistics to make them rock solid and very hard to dispute. Levitt’s approach on the world is very different from the average person’s, he looks at everything from what statistics and data tells him. He states “The conventional wisdom is often wrong…”

and challenges the reader to think of issues the same way that he does.
Levitt has years of experience as an economist to back up his research and statistics that he uses to back up his argument. He has been researching statistics for years and finding correlations between two separate but related events for his job that his ethos is established immediately. Levitt has been making correlations with numbers in order to try to predict what the economy will do. When he did the research for this book he took what he had already been doing for most of his life and applies it to society and the issues that many of us face or discuss. Levitt studied at Harvard and completed his doctoral studies in economics at MIT in 1994. The schools he attended further establish Levitt’s ethos, showing that he was well educated and has spent a substantial amount of time learning how to research and interpret statistics. Levitt’s view on certain subjects may be biased because he may look at information from a statistical side, rather than looking at the whole picture. This may be due to how he was taught or just how he learned to look at information because he has analyzed data for most of his life. The author is trying to convince people that conventional wisdom is often wrong. He is trying to get the audience to look at the statistics behind everything and convince them that they should base their decisions off of what statistics and correlations of events tell them rather than taking into account the human side of the issue.
Levitt makes arguments that prove conventional wisdom wrong on several occasions.

His view on the world is based upon his own research and statistics that he deduces from said research. He takes the information that he finds and presents in to the audience so that they can understand it. This book analyzes many different issues and draws conclusions based off of the information Levitt found by doing intensive research of the statistics surrounding the issues of cheaters, the power of information, the importance of drugs and gangs to the economy, how abortion affects crime rates and the effects of parenting on their children and how it determines who they become. Levitt appeals to logos often when presenting information, he interprets statistics he finds from his research to back up his statements in order to make a well rounded argument. One of the things Levitt notes is that drug dealers make less than minimum wage. He then questions why gang members who sell drugs still live with their mothers. The answer is that they get payed less than the lowest paying legal jobs. To make large amounts of money in gang work, a member have to be near the top the same way that capitalist economy works. The higher up the ladder a member is the higher their yearly income is. Levitt comes to the conclusion that gangs are an essential part of the economy. He correlates the amount of people employed to stop gangs or help people get out of gang life, and comes to the conclusion that a

colossal amount of jobs nation wide are dependent on the existence of gangs. The amount of jobs created to stop drug sales and gangs in general is so high that if they succeeded and ended gangs, our economy would take a major hit. It seems as if he simply based his idea off of what it would do to the economy not how many people gangs hurt or kill every year. Levitt does not take into account humanity when analyzing much of this, he simply focuses on the economic side of things. Levitt also writes about how information is power. He writes about how Stetson Kennedy was able to take down the Ku Klux Klan by sharing information about them with news companies. He shared the secrets of the KKK with the public and in doing so made their whole organization fall apart. The amount of power Kennedy wielded by infiltrating their ranks and gaining information was enough to bring the organization toppling down. Levitt chose a good story to back his argument up for this part of the book. If Kennedy had not released the information he did, the KKK could still be at it to this day. Levitt addresses varying aspects of parenting and how parent’s choices, financial status and actions can influence the outcome of their children’s lives. The first thing he looked at was the safety of swimming in a back yard pool compared to playing with a gun. He came to the conclusion that a child is 100 rimes more likely to be killed while swimming in the pool than playing with a gun. He comes to this conclusion by looking at the statistics behind children who have died due to guns and comparing that to children who have drown in their pools. Levitt also looks at the difference between the way names influence people’s lives. He says that names can be a defining factor in how one is seen and that there is a big difference in black people’s names and white people’s names. He comes to this conclusion by looking at studies relating to people’s names and how other people associate certain names to a certain races. Levitt also looks at the comparison of comparing violent crimes and abortion for a correlation. He looks at the differences between the amount of violent crime before abortion was legal and after it was legal. He looked at the data 18 years after abortion was legalized to see what the difference was between before and after the children who would have been born if abortion was still illegal. He draws the conclusion based on his research that since violent crimes dropped right after abortion became legal that abortion helps prevent violent crimes. Levitt also contributes part of the crime drop to police forces growing over time. He estimate that about 10 percent of the drop in crime is due to growing police forces.
Brian Clowes, a journalist who writes for Life News, asked if Levitt’s claim about abortion was actually true.

Clowes found after doing some research that “Law professors John R. Lott, Jr. of Yale Law School and John E. Whitley of the University of Adelaide found that legalizing abortion increased murder rates by up to seven percent.” He went on to say that the legalization of abortion is “a contributing factor to the great increase in out‑of‑wedlock births and single parent families, which in turn contribute to increased crime rates.” Crowes also found other statisticians had done research on the same subject and found that David Murray concluded “the number of crimes committed by older people dropped first.” before that of young people. If this is true, then Levitt’s claim that there was a correlation between young crime and abortion is false. Murray also found that eighteen years after abortion was legalized in other countries, the crime rate went up relative to the crime rate before abortion was illegal. Murray states, “FBI statistics showed that the murder rate in 1993 for 14‑ to 17‑year‑olds in the USA (born in the years 1975‑1979, which had very high abortion rates) was 3.6 times higher than that of kids who were the same age in 1984 (who were born in the pre‑legalization years of 1966‑1970).” Murray concluded the reason we saw a decline in violence after abortion was legalized is due to “the crack epidemic, not abortion.” Just because statistics show one thing, it

does not necessarily mean it is true. Steven Malanga found that Professor Ted Joyce of City University of New York had done research on the same subject and came to the same conclusion that “rather than decrease crime, legalized abortion probably contributed slightly to its increase.” Malanga also looks at Levitt’s claims about police forces. He says “New York City’s violent crime rate has continued to decline, down by nearly another 25 percent, even though the city’s police force, caught in a post-9/11 budget crunch, has shrunk by several thousand officers.” This disproves Levitt’s claim about increasing police forces causing a decline in crime. Steven Malanga comments on Levitt’s methods of using statistics stating “In Freakonomics, Levitt does nothing to acknowledge, much less explain, all of these statistical exceptions to his theories.” He also says “It’s one thing to challenge the conventional wisdom with your own fresh data. It’s quite another simply to ignore all the facts that don’t fit neatly into your new way of thinking.” When addressing how Levitt handles criticism of his studies Malanga says “Levitt has addressed some of these criticisms in academic journals, though not convincingly, to my mind. But in Freakonomics, he completely ignores this counter-evidence and presents his own work as if it’s Scripture. Only a few reviewers, most notably the eminent sociologist James Q. Wilson in Commentary, have noted the way the book merely disregards the work of others.” It is pretty evident that there is a great deal of skepticism that surrounds this book and whether the studies that Levitt did to get his information were correct. Clowes finds that in “the last paragraph of their paper, Donohue and Levitt agree that an equivalent reduction in crime would be caused by “providing better environments for those children at greatest risk for future crime.”” Proving that much of what Levitt says is more for the shock factor and that they are not actually looking for the best solution, just things that will keep the reader hooked. Clowes makes the point that if unwanted births were all aborted, many famous and influential people such as “John Lennon, Charlie Chaplin, Louis Armstrong, playwright Eugene O’Neill, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Merle Haggard, comedian Tim Allen and, ironically, the politician who has most fanatically supported abortion in the history of the nation, Barack Obama” would be dead. Clowes also cites Margaret Sanger, who advocated for abortion in poor families to try to weed out the possible criminals. Her program did not improve the lives of the poor, all it did was turn possibly large poor families into smaller poor families. This further proves that what Levitt proposes is for shock and awe, it does not actually fix anything. As you can see there are many counter arguments to Levitt’s new non-conventional view of the world, but we must decide who is correct and who is just full of hot air. I think that what Levitt did was wrong. Many people told him his studies were wrong, he ignored all those people and wrote Freakonomics anyway. I understand not agreeing with others, but when a large amount of people reject your research, that is probably an indication that it is wrong. There is something to be said with out of the box thinking, but not when backed up by false information.
I agree that there is something to be said for patterns in statistics, however I think that we should also take into account the implications of what is being said and not just base our opinions on the math alone. Just because statistics show one thing, does not always mean that it is true. Other factors have to be taken into account when making decisions about current events. It is important to look at more than just a few pieces of data. I disagree with much of what Levitt said solely because he only took into account what he found when looking at the math, and he did not even go so far as to fact check the data he found. When one makes statements regarding gangs, abortion and other important issues they musts take into account that if there were no gangs then there would not be as many people dead due to violent crimes. In fact it would actually do what Levitt was trying to prove abortion to do. I do not understand why he looked at gangs from an economic standpoint and at abortion by how many violent crimes occurred, it is backwards thinking. I do agree on some of Levitt’s points. Information is powerful and I do not think anyone can argue against that. All in all I think there is some truth to what Levitt thinks, you must keep in mind statistics when thinking about the world, but you must also take into account other factors that range far from simple statistics and how they correlate. Decisions about major issues should not be based upon a few numbers that just so happen to increase and decrease at the same time. You have to look at the whole picture and consider all sides of an issue before deciding what your final statement is. Statistics are important, but we are not computers. You must remember that there is a human element to every major issue that must be considered. So no, I do not agree with Levitt, you cannot look at the world only considering statistics.