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The great crime decline is happening all across the country

43 points · 64 comments · andsoitis

  1. downrightmike · · focus · HN ↗
    Just like abortions in the 70's stopped the super criminals from existing in the 90's. Not having unwanted kids goes a long way to prevent crime. Now we are in the place where people want kids, but can't afford them so they aren't.
    1. beaned · · focus · HN ↗
      Children have never been more affordable than they are now. People's wants and expectations have changed.
      1. chanakya · · focus · HN ↗
        Exactly. If you want to bring up kids the way they were brought up in the 50s and 60s, it will cost less as a proportion of people's incomes today. No one wants to bring up kids that way, though.
        1. vannevar · · focus · HN ↗
          >it will cost less as a proportion of people's incomes today.

          Do you have any evidence for this assertion, or are you relying on intuition here? A cursory search yields a number of references similar to this one---<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reno.nyloffices.com&#x2F;resources&#x2F;articles&#x2F;starting-a-family-the-total-cost-of-a-baby" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reno.nyloffices.com&#x2F;resources&#x2F;articles&#x2F;starting-a-fa..., which indicate that the cost of raising a child has gone up significantly, at least in the last 40 years. And many of these references do not include the cost of college, which has skyrocketed. I&#x27;m not sure what you mean by &quot;bringing up kids the way they were brought up in the 50s and 60s.&quot; They certainly had housing in the 50s and 60s, and that single expense alone is probably enough to make today&#x27;s kids more expensive.

          1. kasey_junk · · focus · HN ↗
            Even a cursory reading of that article is full of stat crimes. They denominate a single value for the past then a gigantic range for current times. But basic math shows no major increase for the bottom of their range in their own numbers.

            I don’t have any intuition or stats either way but that’s a bad and biased citation.

            Which is not surprising giving it’s selling something.

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