For a moment let’s go back to the 1990’s and imagine that we are living in the US.

The majority of the section in the newspaper was devoted to the CRIME news, then. Any right minded person would have been scared by the increase in the crime trend. Robbery, rape, gunfire and carjacking were common. To make matters worse experts gave their prediction on the crime growth. They had an optimistic and pessimistic scenario. In the optimistic scenario crime was supposed to increase 15% over the next decade and in the pessimistic scenario it would double.

To accentuate the situation, President Bill Clinton in a speech said “We know we’ve got about six years to turn this juvenile crime thing around,  or our country is going to be living with chaos. And my successors will not be giving speeches about the wonderful opportunities of the global economy; they’ll be trying to keep body and soul together for people on the streets of these cities.”

Enter the new millennium. The crime rate instead of rising 100% or even 15% as predicted by the experts, started to fall. By 2000 the murder rate had dropped to its lowest level in 35 years. The experts as usual started praising the growing economy, strict gun control laws, rise in technology and policing strategies.

But none of the above was the true reason for the reduction in crime. It was brought down by a lady called Norma McCorvey.

She had already planted a seed for the crime reduction in the 1970’s without her knowledge. She was a poor, uneducated and unmarried woman who already had two children and found herself pregnant again. Abortion was not legalized then and she filed a case in the Supreme Court. The court ruled in her favor allowing legalized abortion.

It is believed that majority of the criminals come from poor family or in fact by unwanted children of poor, unmarried teenage mothers. With legalized abortion these children or future criminals were never born. This actually was the cause for the decline in crime in the early 2000’s. None of them citied legalized abortion as a cause for crime reduction.

What is described above is the summary of the first chapter in the book that I am currently reading. Freaky Economics or freakonomics.

The fruit in the picture might look like an apple on the outside but it’s an orange on the inside.

The authors also have a blog where they discuss interesting topics. This book is a fun read and discuss interesting ideas on how economics can be used in decision making.

Moral : If you ever think that the work you do is insignificant or menial you are completely wrong. Any small action that we do now could bring a significant change either the next moment or may be the next year or may even take 20 years as it took for Norma McCorvey.