(Very) basic economics and abortion
In response to some things that Amber recently said over on her blog:
First of all, the "I'm no psychologist" part of Matt's statement was meant to apply to his guess that getting something at zero costs causes its demand to go up at an exceptional rate compared with the rise in demand that results from lowering the price to next-to-nothing. In other words, he's saying that as the price goes lower, demand goes up, and then when the price goes from, say, a nickel to nothing, demand spikes by a relatively large amount. This is his "theory" which he qualifies with his statement that he is "not a psychologist."I'm not a psychologist, but I think making things free has a mental effect on a person to the effect that they think "why not, it's free?" and do something they wouldn't normally do if there was even a small charge involved.Matt, I see you qualified your statement with "I'm not a psychologist..." but nevertheless, just wanted to point out that this strikes me as the same mentality that says, "If abortion is legal, everyone will have unprotected sex all the time!" It's a theory that you can bounce around and choose to believe if you want to, but without anr research to back it up, it can't be used as the basis of policy decisions.
Putting aside whether demand really does takes an extra spike when the price of something goes all the way down to zero, the basic idea Matt is expressing is a very simple one: you get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you penalize (all else being equal, of course). If price is forced down by some factor external to the market (like the government passing a law saying that poor people don't have to pay for such-and-such), demand will (all else equal) go up. If the actual cost of a particular product or behavior goes up, people will do it less than they had done it before. Not every person will do it less, but on the whole the 'demand' for the product or activity will be lower. And notice how modest and qualified Matt's statement was: knowing something is free, that it has no cost to you personally, makes you more likely to do it than if it had some cost. Well, duh, right? This is just basic economic reasoning.
Amber wants to compare this to a pure conjecture that has nothing backing it up. Matt (and presumably anyone else) can "bounce it around" in his head and believe it if he wants, but "it can't be used as the basis of policy decisions." And the pure conjecture that Amber chooses to illustrate her point is an unrecognizable caricature of the pro-life position. What pro-lifer actually believes that the availability of legal abortion causes "everyone" to have unprotected sex "all the time"? Unsupported theory, indeed.
If you really want to apply Matt's uncontroversial theory to abortion, then it should look something like this: If people know that they can get abortions without facing any legal consequences, then this will lead to more people having abortions than we would see when legal penalties are attached. Making abortion legal makes it "cost" less to the people who are considering it (legal risk is reduced almost entirely, the cost of the procedure comes down since it is no longer a black market good). Lower cost means higher demand. So we should expect to see more abortions performed after Roe v. Wade than we saw before. And what do we actually see? Bingo.
Matt's thinking asserts a connection between the lower price of a good (health care) and the increased demand of that same good (health care). Amber's proposed analogous conjecture would assert something much more difficult and complex, that a lower price of a good or service (abortion) causes an increased demand of something completely different (unprotected sex). The two are clearly disanalogous.
24 comments:
I skimmed your post here -- gotta drive to Columbia in 15 minutes for an interview -- but I wanted to comment thusly:
Furthermore, if you make abortions free for all you may end up with a situation similar to that of Cuba -- where women under 30 average something like three to four abortions each. It *is* birth control in Cuba -- so much for socialism/communism/whateverism.
Xon, your decision to post this on your blog rather than over at the Feel Good Center for Surrounding Oneself With People Who Comfort The Author By Agreeing With Her is very telling. You were clearly trying to dodge the powerful secret weapon of compassion, which invalidates any reasoned, educated appeal to the laws of economics.
Naw, garrett, xon's just afraid of Amber ripping him a new one.
And, really, if you think that abortion is a riskless procedure, you're either being disingenuous or you're completely ignorant about the procedures involved.
If you really wanted to reduce abortions, you'd provide free birth control, adequate sex education and increase these kids availility to health care of all sorts. By not doing so and instead suggesting legal means, it's clear that the real goal is the limitation of choice instead of the protection of life.
And Russell:
Furthermore, if you make abortions free for all you may end up with a situation similar to that of Cuba -- where women under 30 average something like three to four abortions each. I
Citation from a non-exiled Cuban or Christian missionary organization is necessary for me not to laugh at you.
Oh, bosh, eponymous. You're so full of it. Amber, or anyone else, is free to come over here and rip me as many as they please. If they can stay on topic and refrain from outright profanity or anonymous snipes from the trees, then they are welcome to say whatever they think best. I have no plans of censoring those with whom I disagree, or of acting as a blind (in the bad sense) referee who tells my ideological opponents to be nice but ignores pettiness and nastiness from my friends. Nor do I have any intention of getting my feelings hurt over whatever someone says. Including if someone critiques me for being immoral due to some position I hold. I want debate on my blog. It's one of my primary personal reasons for having a blog. And, I actually mean it when I say that.
"And, really, if you think that abortion is a riskless procedure, you're either being disingenuous or you're completely ignorant about the procedures involved."
Didn't say it. Don't believe it. You can understand my argument better than this.
"If you really wanted to reduce abortions, you'd provide free birth control, adequate sex education and increase these kids availility to health care of all sorts. By not doing so and instead suggesting legal means, it's clear that the real goal is the limitation of choice instead of the protection of life."
More mind reading, as is your forte. With your skills of analysis, there's no need to have a debate! Epon can just authoritatively pronounce upon the true intentions and philosophy of his discussion partner. Our discussion in the "NOW" thread is going fairly well, but I'm afraid we're off to a bad start here.
Ep -- first, I commend you for one of the funniest jokes I've seen on the internets in all my years online: "...xon's just afraid of Amber ripping him a new one." Amber ripping someone a new one in a debate...AH HAHAHAHAHA! Whew, lemme catch my breath.
Second, I agree with your points about education as I've stated before. I think it would cut down on a lot of the problems we currently have. I disagree with your assertions about Xon's "true agenda," though I do know him at least a little better than you do so I can base my opinions on the matter on my prior knowledge of him.
The "average Cuban woman, at 30, has had 4 abortions and has been divorced 3 times" quote or statistic actually came from a show Oprah did on women of different cultures and what their experiences are like.
Before you state the obvious, not a great source, but they could have done the requisite research -- anyway, I misremembered it from a documentary I saw on Cuba. However, Cuba does rank at least third in the world in the rates of abortion per year. The abortion rate was 7.7% for women aged 15-44 in 1996 (study by the U.N. -- not exactly Cuban expatriate or Christian). So, while maybe not as high as 4 per average 30 year old, the rate is still very high and is at least in part due to the easy access created by abortion on demand.
Be careful Russ. The line between a clever rebuttal and ad hominem mockery can be very fine, I know, but let's be extra careful not to simply mock Amber or anyone else.
You mean to tell us that lo these last 30 years the Public schools, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, the Music industry and of course, the internet have failed to provide ever increasing "access" to "health care" and "sex education" to our youth? You're claiming there's much much more out there?
Kids are having oral sex while claiming it's "not sex" as it is....all while having "sex-ed" from K-through graduate school ram-rodded down their throats.
No, the problem IS sex-ed and all the means of cultural formation that hype sex as a super-duper fun passtime with zero bad consequences, from Barbie to Bratz, SI to Maxim...
Giving free contraceptives won't stop the behavior that leads to pregnancy that leads to abortion! More "how to" courses won't stop the behavior that leads to pregnancy either; the younger kids mess with sex, the more often they engage in it, the HIGHER the chance they'll forget to apply the condom, pop a pill, or just "win the lottery" even with such barriers.
Librals, scheesh. You'd think they could think this through....
Um, Anonymous -- you refer to all the Hollywood/&tc info as "sex ed" like the courses that would be taught in school would be the same thing so there's no reason to have them because they get it from the media, et al. Seriously? You seriously think that? Wow. The problem is all the misinformation about sex that the kids get -- actual education from parents and schools would help to counteract that misinformation.
I'd just like for our anonymous poster to spell 'liberal' correctly if he's going to berate my kind.
You mean sex isn't a super-duper fun pasttime? You must be doing it wrong.
Making abortion legal makes it "cost" less to the people who are considering it (legal risk is reduced almost entirely, the cost of the procedure comes down since it is no longer a black market good). Lower cost means higher demand. So we should expect to see more abortions performed after Roe v. Wade than we saw before. And what do we actually see? Bingo.
How successful has the war on drugs been at lowering demand for pot? How successful was prohibition at lowering demand for alcohol?
Let's introduce another concept from (very) basic economics into the discussion: elasticity of demand. I'd argue that for pregnant women who don't want to be mothers, the demand for abortion is extremely inelastic. If I'm correct, then raising the price of abortions - for instance, by making abortions illegal - will have a relatively small impact on demand.
The problem with before-and-after Roe v Wade abortion rate comparisons is that too many people mix up the rate of legal and reported abortions - which obviously went up post-Roe - with the rate of abortions. But in fact, there were about a million abortions a year in the US in the few years before Roe - about the same as there were in the few years just after Roe.
What we need, to lower abortion, is a substitute for abortion. Attacking the supply side won't do much to lower abortion rates, but attacking the demand side can work. For instance, policies which push birth control on teenagers (including the importance of always using two types at once) so hard they get bruised. Countries like Belgium have used this sort of policy to have the lowest abortion rates in the world. I don't understand why pro-lifers have so little interest in imitating that.
I'd say that legalization of drugs, coupled with the inevitable drop in price that would accompany it, would surely lead to more people taking them. What's so hard to believe about that? It's not an argument for the war on drugs, since that involves a lot more than just the simple banning of (some) drugs. With alcohol it is the same. Prohibition did lower the number of people who drank alcohol. To deny this is to deny that there is anyone out there who will not do something they might normally do because it is illegal. But I know people like that. I don't know if I'm one of them, but they're out there.
For the record though, I have no idea how an accurate statistic regarding the number of illegal abortions might be compiled.
I'd say that legalization of drugs, coupled with the inevitable drop in price that would accompany it, would surely lead to more people taking them. What's so hard to believe about that?
Nothing. But you're not understanding the concept of elasticity of demand. If something has an inelastic demand, that doesn't mean that making it more expensive won't have ANY effect on demand, just that the effect won't be especially large.
Look, let's say we ban drinking alcohol. That will lower demand for alcohol - but there will still be a huge demand remaining, and the black market will be substantial. That's because demand for alcohol is pretty inelastic; you can raise the cost a lot, and people will still want it. People want alcohol very badly.
Compare that to banning RCA brank alarm clocks. Such a ban would probably be totally successful, because the demand for RCA alarms is very flexible; people will switch to Sony or Panisonic alarms and never notice the difference. Pretty much no one badly wants an RCA alarm badly.
Which would you guess the demand for abortion is more like - the demand for alcohol, or the demand for RCA alarms? I'd say the former. Women who want abortions often DESPARATELY want one; they'll take on substantial trouble, risk and expense to get one.
Will you lower demand on the margins by banning abortion? Of course. But it won't make a very big difference, because consumer demand for abortion is pretty inelastic.
The countries in the world with the lowest abortion rates are countries where abortion is legal - without exception. No country has ever succeeded in getting to a really low abortion rate by banning abortion. If the demand is high enough, the market always finds a way around barriers - and that includes legal barriers.
The only way to have a really low abortion rate is to lower demand, rather than banning supply. That means pushing birth control on teens as if it were oxygen, and also providing painfully generous welfare support for single mothers.
Will that have negative side effects? Maybe. But if pro-lifers are serious about lowering the abortion rate, they should be willing to consider the trade-offs. What good is an "idealogically correct" approach to lowering abortion rates, if it doesn't actually work very well compared to other methods?
For the record though, I have no idea how an accurate statistic regarding the number of illegal abortions might be compiled.
You do a representative sample survey and ask women if they've had an abortion. This will lead to an underestimate of the true number of abortions, since people are strongly motivated to lie about having committed illegal acts (and even where it's legal, many women prefer not to admit having had an abortion), but it'll at least give you a baseline to work from.
Hi, Amp,
Your observations about demand inelasticity are accurate enough, but don't really affect the overall point that I was making. Even in cases of inelastic demand, demand does in fact decrease when 'costs' are raised. It does not decrease as substantially as we would expect under 'normal' conditions (where we imagine that the demand for most things is actually fairly elastic), that is true.
Demand for gasoline is pretty inelastic. But, when the price goes up, the demand does go down somewhat. Inelasticity does not subvert the more 'basic' rule of supply and demand. Your own analysis makes this clear, so I really don't think we have much to argue about on this point.
As to abortion, remember that I was only interacting with a caricature of the pro-life position in the first place. My own argument against abortion is hardly an economic one. It is a moral argument. Abortion should be illegal because it is prima facie a form of murder (i.e., unjustified killing of a human being). There may very well be other, better ways to actually decrease its occurence, and I'm open to such suggestions. But it should be illegal on top of those other ways, for the simple fact that murder ought to be illegal regardless of the deterring effects of its illegality.
As to whether demand for abortion actually is inelastic/elastic, my overall position in this thread isn't affected either way, but I'm not convinced by your analysis. I suppose we can only settle it by appeals to statistics, but that will inevitably become boring to the philosopher inside my head. My own understanding is that abortions occurred far less frequently pre Roe v. Wade, and I am not aware of anything that would support the "one million a year" number you presented. But I'm open to your evidence, bored as my inner philosopher may become (I can usually keep him under control if I need to).
Of course this ...
I suppose we can only settle it by appeals to statistics, but that will inevitably become boring to the philosopher inside my head.
... makes me want to claw your eyes out. :)
But no matter ...
With regard to abortions occuring far more frequently prior to Roe v. Wade, I've always heard that to be true. In fact, last year I read Tony Campolo's 20 Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid To Touch and, in his chapter on abortion, found similar data supporting that. Of course, I don't have said book with me now and can't cite from it.
What I did find were vague statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and some research from the American Enterprise Institute, both which show the states with the harshest bans (allowing for abortions only when the life of the mother is threatened) actually had higher abortion rates than those with more lax regulations or no ban whatsoever.
As for the 'one million a year' estimation, the only reference I could track down for it suggests it came from this book - Induced Abortion: A World Review by Henshaw Tietze.
My own understanding is that abortions occurred far less frequently pre Roe v. Wade, and I am not aware of anything that would support the "one million a year" number you presented. But I'm open to your evidence, bored as my inner philosopher may become (I can usually keep him under control if I need to).
Dammit, why must it always come down to evidence! :-P
Although measuring something as hidden as illegal abortions is always difficult, the best pre-Roe scholarly assessment came to a figure of about a million abortions a year ("…prior to the adoption of more moderate abortion laws in 1967, there were 1 million abortions annually nationwide, of which 8000 were legal." From Christopher Tietze "Abortion on request: its consequences for population trends and public health," Seminars in Psychiatry 1970;2:375-381, quoted in JAMA December 9, 1992).
Another option is to look at what happens to birth rates; a sudden, large increase in abortions should lead to a corresponding sudden decline in birth rate. So if Roe caused a big jump in abortions in its first few years, we'd see it as a decline in the birthrate. So what actually happened after Roe was passed?
Year || Births || Birthrate
1973 || 3,136,965 || 14.9
1974 || 3,159,958 || 14.9
1975 || 3,144,198 || 14.8
1976 || 3,167,788 || 14.8
1977 || 3,326,632 || 15.4
1978 || 3,333,279 || 15.3
1979 || 3,494,398 || 15.9
1980 || 3,612,258 || 15.9
Similarly, what happened when Poland banned abortions in the 1990s? If pro-life policies reduce abortion significantly, there would have been a spike in Poland's birthrate. But Poland's birth rate remained steady. (See Reproductive Health Matters (Volume 10, Issue 19 , May 2002): "The restrictive abortion law in Poland has not increased the number of births.")
My own argument against abortion is hardly an economic one. It is a moral argument. Abortion should be illegal because it is prima facie a form of murder (i.e., unjustified killing of a human being). There may very well be other, better ways to actually decrease its occurence, and I'm open to such suggestions. But it should be illegal on top of those other ways, for the simple fact that murder ought to be illegal regardless of the deterring effects of its illegality.
There are three questions this brings up, in my view.
First of all, has the pro-life movement actually been proposing that we treat abortion as if it were murder?
I'd say not. The most recent federal partial-birth abortion ban, for example, said that mothers absolutely cannot be punished for their part in abortion; doctors could be punished by a fine.
Is there anyone in the world willing to endorse this policy for a murdered five year old child? A mother hires a hit man to off her five-year-old child; if that happens, should we have a law saying that no matter what the mother cannot be punished, and the most that happens to the hit man is a fine?
The argument that pro-lifers can't consider what is practical, because of their unshakable moral commitment to treating abortion as murder, falls apart when we look at the laws pro-lifers propose.
Second question: Is the "let's do it both ways" plan viable, or are abortion reduction strategies a binary, one-or-the-other choice?
I'd say it's one or the other. Th U.S. has a two party system; no matter how nuanced our personal positions, the real choice we make is between column D and column R. One party supports policies that have actually led to low abortion rates in the real world, but opposes a ban. The other party opposes policies that have actually led to low abortion rates, but supports a ban. And that's our choice.
And it's a choice that matters in the real world. If the US had an abortion rate as low as Belgium's, that would mean something between 700,000 and 800,000 fewer abortions a year, according to my seat-of-the-pants calculations.
Which brings me to my third question. In a system that forces us to choose between one or the other, which is better: 700,000 murders potentially prevented, or 700,000 murders not prevented plus an official statement calling abortion murder?
I don't know what your choice is. But the pro-life movement as a whole clearly favors the latter policy. And I find that incomprehensible. Putting abstract principle above 700,000 lives doesn't seem like a supportable position, to me, and certainly undermines the pro-life claim to be motivated only by caring about what happens to babies.
What would you say about a policy that did both (practical policies that reduce abortions "in the real world" and an abstract principle that bans abortion) or a policy that did neither (no practical policies for reducing abortions "in the real world" nor an abstract principle banning abortion)?
Also, what are you intimating by 'undermines the pro-life claim to be motivated only by caring about what happens to babies'?
Xon, I think it funny that you would become bored when someone presents evidence militating against your position. I like, though, that you're honest about that.
Ampersand, a different question than the one I asked before. Supposing a caricatured pro-life argument is correct, insofar as the connection between availability of abortion and likelihood of sexual intercourse are directly proportional, it is coherent with our hypothesis that banning abortions did not produce a spike in the birth rate, since those people who were wantonly having sex and getting abortions are now deterred from having the sex that produced the babies (fetus, blastocysts, &tc) in the first place. Do you think, barring the obvious question of the reasonability of the caricature's supposition, this is coherent, or even consistent? Likewise, even with that same supposition, would it be coherent also that when abortions become available, there are more people who are wantonly having more sex because of the increased availability of abortion, resulting in some births actually occurring instead of aborting (some babies are made from the increased sex, as not all are aborted)?
My point is that I think your argument from the evidence is a good one, but unfortunately can be rendered coherent with the supposition of the caricatured pro-life position. In other words, rates of birth correlated to availability of abortion can be interpreted as further justification of that position's hypothesis concerning the relationship of acts of intercourse with availability of abortion. If the object is to demonstrate the absurdity of the hypothesis—which I take it Amber thinks is obvious and Xon thinks is irrelevant—this statistical evidence won't do the trick: it is too easily rendered coherent with the hypothesis itself. I'm sympathetic to your strategy: if pro-life people are really concerned with reducing abortions, why are they not going through with the policies that historically have been shown to reduce them, unless there are other reasons for adopting the policies they do? But, I'm also sympathetic to what Xon just recently stated: it's not just reducing abortions that is the goal of the policy, but it is also a question of legitimation.
I think that your argument doesn't get at that, even though it is strong insofar as reducing abortions goes, because working throughout your argument is an assumption, a reasonable and modern one, that if something is to be illegitimate, then the goal of a ban or a cessation or a proscription or an interdiction or a prohibition of a thing is to reduce to the point of elimination that thing's existence, use, appearance, presence, effects, &tc. The problem is that Xon doesn't make and isn't making that assumption along with you. Proscriptions, if we're to do a historical or genealogical analysis, are not always operationally for elimination of a thing. Reduction of a thing may result from indirect effects, but originally (as in, in the origin of identifying something to be under the taboo) the proscription sets aside something as sacred or irredeemably profane—the positioning is ontological, not sociological. The point is that the proscription's purpose is not to eliminate the thing, but to set it aside as a marker for the structure of a society. In this respect, whether or not a taboo actually performs in the function of a deterrent to something is quite irrelevant, and why the argument about Prohibition actually increasing usage of alcohol doesn't get at, and can't get at, what was important about Prohibition in terms of its construction of the social in the United States at that time. Taboos, bans, proscriptions structure society according to certain standards or models, such that competition over what are the legitimate taboos, bans, proscriptions result in any society in which there are intense, deep, and complex differences in which standards and models will be used. It's in what we can't do (the law) and in what we can get away with (the obscene supplement to the law) that the social is constructed, not in its presented content.
But perhaps Xon wouldn't argue along with me on that last point, but would go along with respect to the irrelevancy of the performance of a law for reducing-to-elimination a thing. Hence, why Xon would rather argue true to his inner philosopher: the disagreement is over what will count as the standard and model of a just society, and so the argument will be in reference not to the consequential efficiency among principles (which will require a look at the statistical evidence available empirically), but to the symbolic efficacy in principles (which will require a look at the social structures built from the principles). (This is also, I take it, one of the strong ways in which Xon is not a thorough-going capitalist, and one of the ways in which I hope he most does not change.) But not everyone wants to argue in that fashion, and not everyone can argue in that fashion, and not everyone should argue in that fashion. Xon, though, thinks he should, believes he can, and knows he wants to.
But, I don't think that means he is for "abstractions" or that those of us who live "in the real world" should do things empirically. The real world is constructed from social abstractions, and the abstract is deadly relevant to the empirical observation.
Real quick to say this ...
The real world is constructed from social abstractions, and the abstract is deadly relevant to the empirical observation.
... has a definite The Matrix theme to it. That's all. :)
Charles has done a fair job describing my position in my absence.
I went aheard an turned my fuller response into a new post. Feel free to continue here, or to take up again in the comments under the new one.
One thing that might be inflating the abortion rate in america as opposed to some european countries is our significant ethnic minority population. The per-pregnancy abortion rate among blacks and hispanics is about 3 times as high as whites. This causes the total rate to increase by about 50% assuming these races make up about 25% of the total population. This is probably one of those things that isn't supposed to be said, but oh well.
Well, the poor have a much higher per-pregnancy abortion rate as well. And blacks and hispanics make up a disproportionate number of the poor. So the real indicator of higher abortion rate might be poverty, not ethnicity. But this would then entail that the abortion rate should also be high in European countries, Japan, etc. I don't know the stats on that.
I think they're rather low, but I don't know for sure. I've always wondered if this is one of those unusual 'America' problems ... in that we have absurdly high gun crime rates when compared to the rest of the industrialized world, many of whom have similar if not more lax gun control laws than us.
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