Having a Baby Cuts Crime by 25%

Via Alex Tabarrok, here’s an interesting new paper about crime. It turns out that having a baby reduces crime among women substantially. This is unsurprising, and also of limited value since nearly all low-level crime is committed by men. So how does childbirth affect them? Here you go:

The chart on the left shows drops in every kind of crime. The chart on the right puts everything together and shows a gigantic overall drop in crime when men become fathers. More accurately, given the timeline, it shows that the drop in crime begins during pregnancy. The mere prospect of becoming a father in the near future is enough to cut crime rates by about 25 percent.

Nor is this effect limited to married men. Unmarried fathers offend at much higher rates than married men, but their offense rate drops far more than married men when their partner gets pregnant.

This study is based on administrative data from Washington state, and it would certainly be worth replicating elsewhere. If it holds up, it shows that becoming a parent is one of the most powerful anti-crime tools around. Even the prospect of spending 20 years in prison has nowhere near the deterrent effect of having a baby.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate