Marginal Revolution

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Abortion Politics

The Wall Street Journal and the American Spectator have sunk to an embarassing low with the publication of an article arguing that abortion is reducing the number of Democrats voters - believe it or not, in the literal sense that more of the "mssing voters" would have been Democrats than Republicans.

There are 19,748,000 Democrats who are not with us today.

There are 13,900,000 Republican who are not with us today.

By comparison, then, the Democrats have lost 5,848,000 more voters than the Republicans have.

These Missing Americans--and particularly the millions of Missing Voters--when compounded over time are of enormous political consequence.

I feel sad for people who care so little about ideas that their response to every issue is, will it help us win? Washington is full of people like that. It's been said that politics degrades all debate into an anti-intellectual counting of noses. Now we are counting missing noses.

In addition to being pathetic the article is wrong. Responding may dignify it more than it deserves but the article does at least get the numbers wrong in an interesting way so here goes.

The reduction in population from abortion is far smaller than the number of abortions. How can this be? The relationship between abortion and birth is not mechanical but depends on the choices that women (and men) make among sexual frequency, contraceptive use, fertility, child spacing and other variables. An unmarried, poor teenager who has an abortion may give birth to a child when she is older, married and financially more secure, that she would not have had if she had not had the abortion. The abortion changes the timing of birth but not the total number of births.

Similarly, if abortion were made illegal, contraceptives would be used more often and sexual frequency would decrease. As a result, it is theoretically possible that restricting abortion could reduce the number of births.

In a careful and elegant paper, Levine, Trainor and Zimmerman (1996), find just this. LTZ estimate that restrictions on Medicaid funding of abortions reduced the number of abortions but the number of pregnancies fell even further so the number of births actually went down not up.

Putting things the other way, compensating behavior means that abortion liberalization will reduce the number of births by less than the number of abortions. Five states legalized abortion in 1970, prior to Roe v. Wade (Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, and Washington). Levine, Staiger, Kane and Zimmerman (1999) estimate that births in these states fell by 5% more than in states that had not legalized abortion. Applying this number to today's rates they estimate "a complete recriminalization of abortion would result in 320,000 additional births per year." Since there are about 1.3 million abortions a year, only about a quarter of all abortions represent a net reduction in births.

The reduction in births, even though considerably smaller than than the number of abortions, is not distributed randomly across the population so abortion policy can have an impact on things like crime and teenage pregnancy but the number of Democrats and Republicans has got to be one of the least interesting consequences.

Hat tip to MemeFirst for alerting me to the article.

How to have a baby

She eats bread, he hangs up and smokes khat.

And if that fails, maybe try this.

Addendum: If you are young, try watching TV. And here is another tip. Isn't science wonderful?

Two days with Milton Friedman

I just had the pleasure of spending two days in the company of Milton and Rose Friedman. Milton remains jovial and sharp at the age of 91; Rose spoke less but beamed throughout.

I asked Milton the following two questions, he gave me permission to quote him:

1. TC: Is inflation coming back? MF: "Eventually, but not anytime soon."

2. TC: Have low interest rates been a bubble? MF: "No."

Milton's best anecdote concerned opposition to the idea of a free society. He sees businessmen and academics as the two biggest problems, albeit for opposing reasons. Businessmen want freedom for all other people, only not for themselves. Then they want various subsidies, tariffs, privileges, etc. Academics want freedom for themselves, but not for other people.

How long can the European tax cartel last?

While Germany struggles with inflexible labour laws and high taxation, Austria has pushed through tax reforms that will bring rates down close to east European levels, to run alongside already business-friendly employment measures.

The results have been dramatic. Since January this year, when the first phase of Austria's two-step reforms kicked in with big income tax cuts and some relief for small and medium-size companies, the country has enjoyed a rash of high-profile investment.

Businesses have been enticed not just by the current reforms but by the prospect of corporate rates falling from 34 to 25 per cent, or less than 22 per cent including allowances, from January next year as part of the second stage.

However, Austria's success has been at Germany's expense, as companies relocate from the German border region of Bavaria.

Here is the full story.

Iceland also has been defecting from the high-tax cartel:

After years of economic stagnation, unemployment and fiscal disarray, an Icelandic government led by Prime Minister David Oddsson implemented a series of Reaganesque reforms that have turned the economy around. In the 1990s, he reformed the income tax moving it towards a simpler and flatter structure. He also lowered the corporate marginal tax rate from 48 percent to 30 percent. And he also managed to contain spending, got rid of inflation, privatized large public companies and got the government out of the banking industry.

The results were astonishing. Unemployment dropped, the deficit disappeared, as did inflation, and Iceland is now one of the fastest growing countries in Europe--5 percent a year on average for the last 10 years. According to Mr. Oddsson, "This success has been achieved not in spite of extensive tax cuts but, to a great degree, because of them."

In 2002, the corporate rate was cut again, from 30 percent to 18 percent. Today, Iceland has the third lowest corporate income tax rates of all the OECD countries behind Ireland 12.5 percent and Hungary 16 percent. And according to the Prime Minister, personal income tax will be reduced again this year by four percentage points, the income tax surcharge on the highest incomes will be removed and plans are formed to cut the corporate income tax rate further down to 15 percent.

Here is a previous MR post on the EU as a tax cartel.

Spiderman in India

The character will no longer be known as Peter Parker - but will become the young Pavitr Prabhakar.

He will also have a more modest costume, wearing a dhoti, the loincloth worn by men in India.

Spider-Man would become an Indian boy in Mumbai and dealing with local problems and challenges, he added.

Spider-Man India will interweave local customs, culture and mystery to make it more relevant to the readers, set against the backdrop of monuments including the Taj Mahal and the Gateway of India.

The Green Goblin villain will be replaced by Rakshasa, an Indian mythological demon that has shape-shifting abilities.

Here is the full story. Thanks to Curtis Melvin for the pointer. And here is an Indian joke on The Simpsons.

I will return

No, not another post on the return puzzle (and follow-up here) but a note to indicate that I will be on vacation so expect light blogging from me. The ever-productive Tyler will continue to stream great content to the world.

Was the 20th century one of inflation?

Peter Gordon looks at a 1902 Sears Roebuck catalog and asks whether money was worth more back then.

Of course it depends how much you are given. $5.00 back then goes a longer way, but I would rather earn $100,000 a year today, and yes that is not adjusting for inflation. For Peter modern pharmaceuticals are the clincher:

Would you want their best 1902 camera for $7.90? Probably not. High-end cutlery for 6 for $1.79? Why not? A great western saddle for $8.95? Sure.

It's the Sears "Drug Department" that is the real eye opener. "Fat Folks, Take Rose's Obesity Powders and Watch the Result ... $4.20 per dozen boxes." Herb laxative teas for 16 cents a box may be OK. Dr. Rose's Arsenic Complexion Wafers 35 cents a box may have few takers today. Vin Vitae for 69 cents ("Not a Medicine ... Not Merely a Tonic"). The "White Ribbon Secret Liquor Cure" went for $2.50 a box. The list goes on and does focus the mind.

My question for today: Does this mean that we should adjust the gdp deflator series to show ongoing deflation for the 20th century?

Here is a general plug for Peter's excellent blog. Here is Virginia Postrel on how we underestimate the benefits from new products.

Can the earth support 9 billion wealthy people?

As China and India continue to grow, we must ask whether the earth could support several billion more people at European levels of wealth. Michael Lind says yes:

...there seems to be no insuperable physical or ecological reason why 9bn people should not achieve something like the lifestyle of today's rich, with technology only slightly more advanced than that which we now possess.

Here is part of the argument:

As machines get ever cheaper, more people will be able to afford more of them. Today the combined mass of all machines, at more than a gigaton (Gt), exceeds the combined mass of human beings, about 1 megaton. The total amount of carbon, 5Gt, required to power and construct machines and electric utilities greatly exceeds the 1.3Gt global consumption of carbon by human beings, mostly in the form of food. As affluence grows, the amount of energy and raw materials "consumed" by machinery will escalate even more rapidly than human consumption. But this need not mean an end to the machine age. If manufacturing processes were to imitate the recycling that takes place in the biosphere, then most machine materials might be recycled to make new machines, rather than thrown away. And long before all fossil fuels were exhausted, their rising prices would compel industrial society not only to become more energy efficient but also to find alternative energy sources sufficient for the demands of an advanced technological civilisation - nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, solar energy, chemical photosynthesis, geothermal, biomass or some yet unknown source of energy.

Here is more:

...agriculture, including logging, accounts for about 21m square miles, or ten times as much land as that occupied by urban areas and reservoirs.

Cutting urban land use by half would free only 1m square miles or 2 per cent of the ice-free land surface, while cutting agricultural land use by half would free ten times as much land - 10.6m square miles, or 21 per cent of the earth's non-glaciated surface.

In Lind's view, producing enough meat for nine billion wealthy people is likely to be the biggest problem. In my view, the biggest problems are ones of transition, rather than the end-state. China could get much richer before it moves close to environmental "best practices"; right now per capita income is just approaching that of Guatemala.

A fun tidbit:

Lind quotes Paul Romer: "[if America continues growing] in 50 years we can get extra income per person equal to what in 1984 it had taken us all of human history to achieve."

Addendum: Here is the working link.

The most expensive cities

The first three are Tokyo, London, and Moscow. The cheapest major cities are Asuncion, Paraguay; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

How about the U.S.?

Among U.S. cities, New York, which ranks No. 12 worldwide, is the most expensive. Other cities that rank as among the most expensive are Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. Pittsburgh, meanwhile, ranks as the least expensive city in the country.

Here is some housing information:

For one month in that two-bedroom apartment in Tokyo, you'll drop a stunning $4,501. In Paris, you can expect to pay $2,422 and in Beijing about $3,700.

The same flat in London will cost you about $3,603, whereas in New York you'll pay about $3,500. The best "deals" are in Buenos Aires or Johannesburg, where such an apartment will only cost you about $600.

Here is the full story.