Per Capita Income vs. Property Crime

More likely, property crime has gone down because we're actually putting criminals in prison and keeping them there.

Is it possible to compare prison population to crime rates?

What may also be missing in this graph is data about wealth distribution.

I could just as easily show a graph with property crime vs. cigarette smoking and draw the same sort of conclusion. Or Internet use. Or population density. Or average household size. Or average size of a frosty at Wendy's.

Interesting. I recently write an article that looked at violence vs. income-distribution in the context of racism. Seems very relevant.

Article can be found here:

http://nikitab.newsvine.com...

Er, isn't there data from before the 70s? I thought crime peaked in the 70s sometime? This chart may be misleading in that sense.

Freakonomics, if I recall, drew a causal link between abortion legality and property crime, that making abortion legal reduced the amount of crime.

Er, isn't there data from before the 70s? I thought crime peaked in the 70s sometime? This chart may be misleading in that sense.

Freakonomics, if I recall, drew a causal link between abortion legality and property crime, that making abortion legal reduced the amount of crime.

Us crime rate peaked in 1992. After that criminals were just not born in the first place, because of the introduction of abortion laws (Freakonomics). The theory is widely supported by the data and apparently holds also with data from Romania.

zhgoaignjbjhferhglkjbcljfoigha;sjhgoruhhjndf;lngohf[dhgoinkljsf[pejrkgnmlkgnhlamt

Clint,
I am an adjunct professor at a college in Chicago and we decided to run a simple regression analysis between crime rates and prison population. Our research indicates a strong correlation between the two; therefore, we believe you are on to something.

Econ 441 Microeconomics Westwood College.

Lolli...what the heck? That is the most ridiculous conclusion I have EVER heard of. To say that crime went down b/c "criminals" were killed b/f they had the chance to commit th crime is very narrow minded. I'd look for other possibilities.

I have done this same research. What the author fails to show you is that the exact opposite thing happened from 1960 to 1975. Poverty decreased, median income increased, and yet crime went through the roof.

This chart also doesn't include violent crime which totally changes the curve.