Did Legalising Abortion Reduce Crime in England and Wales?ISER External Seminars

We use panel data from 1983 to 2001 for recorded crime and from 1983 to 2004 for convictions for the
42 police force areas in England and Wales to test the hypothesis that legalizing abortion contributes
to lower crime rates. Using the recorded crime data and a similar model and estimation methodology as
Donohue and Levitt (2001), we are able to replicate for the U.K. the negative association between abortion
rates and reported crime they found for the U.S. However, when we consider various robustness checks, and
using data on convictions broken down by age, we find no clear, consistent relationship between abortion rates and crime.

Presented by:

David Paton (University of Nottingham)

Date & time:

February 12, 2007 4:00 pm - February 12, 2007 12:00 am


External seminars home

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest