Health economics.

• Position: Bureau News - Public health issues

The NBER's Program on Health Economics met in Cambridge on March 26. Program Director Michael Grossman, also of City University of New York, organized this program:

Ted J. Joyce, NBER and Baruch College, "Some Simple Tests of Abortion and Crime"

Neeraj Kaushal, Columbia University, and Robert Kaestner, NBER and Universtty of Illinois, "Welfare Reform and Health Insurance of Immigrants"

Thomas C. Buchmueller, NBER and University of California, Irvine, "Price and Health Plan Choices of Retirees"

Philip J. Cook, NBER and Duke University, and Jens Ludwig, Georgetown University, "Gun Ownership and Homicide Risk"

Bruce D. Meyer, NBER and Northwestern University, and Anthony T. Lo Sasso, Northwestern University, "The Health Care Safety Net and Crowd-Out of Private Health Insurance"

Isaac Ehrlich and Yong Yin, State University of New York, "Rationalizing Diversities in Age-Specific Life Expectancies and Values of Life Saving: A Numerical Analysis"

The inverse relationship between abortion and crime has spurred new research and much controversy. If the relationship is causal, then policies that increased abortion have generated enormous external benefits from reduced crime. In previous papers, Joyce argued that evidence for a casual relationship was weak and incomplete. In this paper, he describes a number of new analyses intended to address criticisms of his earlier papers. First, he closely examines the effects of changes in abortion rates between 1971 and 1974. The changes in abortion rates during this period were dramatic, varied widely by state, had a demonstrable effect on fertility, and were more plausibly exogenous than changes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. If abortion reduced crime, then crime should have fallen sharply as these post legalization cohorts reached their late teens and early 20s, the peak ages of criminal involvement. It did not. Second, he conducts separate estimates for whites and blacks because the effect of legalized abortion on crime should have been much larger for blacks than whites since that legalization had a much stronger effect on the fertility rates of blacks. He finds little race difference in the reduction in crime, though. Finally, he compares changes in homicide rates before and after legalization of abortion, within states, by single year of age. The analysis of older adults is compelling because they were largely unaffected by the crack cocaine epidemic, which was a potentially important confounding...