TY  - JOUR
AU  - Donohue,John J.
AU  - Levitt,Steven D.
TI  - Measurement Error, Legalized Abortion, and the Decline in Crime: A Response to Foote and Goetz (2005)
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11987
PY  - 2006
Y2  - January 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11987
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11987.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John J. Donohue
Stanford Law School
Crown Quadrangle
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/721-6339
E-Mail: donohue@law.stanford.edu

Steven D. Levitt
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/834-1862
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: slevitt@midway.uchicago.edu
AB  - Donohue and Levitt (2001) argue that the legalization of abortion in the United States in the 1970s played an important role in explaining the observed decline in crime approximately two decades later.  Foote and Goetz (2005) challenge the results presented in one of the tables in that original paper.  In this reply, we regretfully acknowledge the omission of state-year interactions in the published version of that table, but show that their inclusion does not alter the qualitative results (or their statistical significance), although it does reduce the magnitude of the estimates.  When one uses a more carefully constructed measure of abortion (e.g. one that takes into account cross-state mobility, or doing a better job of matching dates of birth to abortion exposure), however, the evidence in support of the abortion-crime hypothesis is as strong or stronger than suggested in our original work.
ER  -