Crime & Leadishment
Oct. 7th, 2011 10:21 amAn interesting paper was brought to my attention today... remember the whole freakonomics thing about linking abortion rates to violent crime reductions 20 years later? Well, apparently, there may be another factor at work in the crime rate decreases of the past 2 decades: lead abatement.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097.pdf
Now, I admit that I am probably predisposed to think this is a good paper because it matches my preconceived notions of "EPA good! Pollution bad!" And I haven't really dug into the numbers. If you want the key results, I'd suggest reading the abstract and then skipping all the way to Table 6 on pg. 59 (the panel results data) and Figure 5 (pg. 70).
( Extended discussion of the results of Table 6 )
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097.pdf
Now, I admit that I am probably predisposed to think this is a good paper because it matches my preconceived notions of "EPA good! Pollution bad!" And I haven't really dug into the numbers. If you want the key results, I'd suggest reading the abstract and then skipping all the way to Table 6 on pg. 59 (the panel results data) and Figure 5 (pg. 70).
( Extended discussion of the results of Table 6 )