Levitt And Dubner's Freakonomics

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In Chapter 4 of Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner discuss the criminal activity occurring in the United States and what the possible causes are for the decrease in crime rate in the 1990’s. The authors bring up several theories as to why the crime rates have decreased, reasons given were policemen, stricter gun laws, drug market changes and abortion laws. Abortion has always been a touchy subject, therefore, I feel the media, those who impact what’s in the media; mainly congress and those running for office, attempt to alter our way of thinking and misled us to believe that factors such as policemen, stricter gun laws and drug market changes are the reasons for the decrease of crime. When in my opinion, these are a few of the top reasons for …show more content…
The chapter begins with a question that needed be clarified: Does the name of a child affect their chances of success in the future? Although the statistics show that there is economic success of numerous amounts of people bearing the successful names, they refute, for it is not the child’s name that matters, but the characteristics of the name of the parent who gave the name to the child. Which brings up a previous discussion that was brought up: Correlation vs. Causation (A successful name will lead to the child’s success) as well as the matter of Incentives (Parents earning low income have an incentive to name their child the name of a successful person). Another point brought up is the “snob effect”. In this scenario, a parent who wishes for their child to be successful with a high socioeconomic status would provide them with expensive textbooks or lavish brands of clothing or item to make them seem successful. This correlates to the law of demand. And as the demand--in other words, the name--increases, parents slowly begin to show disfavor of it due to the mass popularity of the name and begin the supply of a name of their own
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