“D&L almost have to be right about the plausibility of the theory. I don’t think there is much dispute about the following. The evidence underlying the theory is that poor black men commit a large portion of violent and property crime. Legalized abortion had a substantial effect on black birth patterns: small reduction in rates accompanied by a fairly large delay in the timing of births primary leading to black women having kids later in life).”

But, do we know for sure that legalized abortion had a major impact on the number of “poor black men” or do we just know that it drove down the number of “black men”?

You’ll note that Donohue and Levitt only cite European studies on who has abortions, because American studies show that, all else being equal, abortion was chosen by better organized, more future-oriented women, while the women who would be lousier mothers tended to go ahead and have their babies.

My impression is that legal abortion had a much bigger impact on the fertility of the black middle and working classes, while have little effect on the black underclass. This could have contributed to underclass values becoming more culturally dominant among blacks during the crack-gangsta rap era.

Greg, I recommend reading the Donohue & Levitt paper linked above (as well as the other papers).

Do they offer justification for this hypothesis? What is the abortion v live birth rate for inner city black girls? What is it for female college students, and high socieo-economic status high school females? While the later two groups may not be “willing” to care for their children, they’re far more “able” than the first group.

Is there any real evidence of more abortions being in the first group, than in the other two?

On Truth on the Market, Josh Wright has an extensive and even-handed discussion of the theoretical and empirical questions ……