Sunday, December 27, 2009

Book: Freakonomics

I finally started reading Freakonomics By Steven Levitt. Who said that economics can't be interesting? This is interesting book that answers some interesting questions in every chapter.

Question from the book: The crime rate started to fall in the 90s instead of rising as was expected. Why?

The crime rate in the States kept rising since the 70s and everyone was expecting the rate to rise even more but what happened in the 90s was unexpected. The crime rate began to fall and fall even more. The number of crimes reported in 1990 was 2245. In 2003 it was 596. The author presents the theories that came up analyzing what happened from the 90s strong economy to police strategies and gun control but none of these did matter. Levitt tells you that it’s the legalization of abortion in 1973 that made all of this. Children who would eventually end up being criminals were not born!

I'm not done yet with the book (Still in Chapter 4) but I just wanted to share one story from the book with you.

8 comments:

Just A Bunch said...

Seems an amusing read!

i miss reading books..

eshda3wa said...

lol

sounds interesting

MBH said...

Legalization of abortion and A LOT LESS POT!

Nemo said...

just a bunch of thoughts: pick something u're interested in, its fun :)

eshda3wa: :)

MBH: maybe :p

Just A Bunch said...

i just got me "Juthoor elKalimat" by Yousef Al-Bader, have u read it? i cant wait to read it.. im keeping it in my bag... so that i can read it... (hopefully)

i miss reading books like i used to, when i could really indulge in them... right now, even novels are hard to read! lol

Nemo said...

la walla i didn't ... i'll check etha mawjod fe virgin

Bloggylife said...

ooooh that's on my list, books keep piling up and I'm trying to keep up :P

Yeah interesting analysis, that's why I got this book :D

Bashar said...

This is the same question that was addressed by Tipping Point. Except I recall he put another perspective for it as I recall, and I bet it's different things adding up.

Anyways, I've got Wikinomics in the nomics era, so I'll see about that :).