The Crime of Lead Exposure

Interesting that the article makes no reference to the Abortion argument put forward in Freakanomics (and defended in its sequel) which argued that making abortions more available in the mid-1970s led to fewer crimes from the 1990s on as those criminals weren't born (that's a bad summary of their detailed argument; don't attack my straw man).

In many ways this is why economics is the dismal science, as are its offshoots in the social sciences. There's excellent data to support the lead claim. Excellent data to support the abortion claim. It could be either, both, or neither in varying degrees, since we're backloading outcomes rather than making predictions.

Thanks for posting that, it's good to see some other explanations for reduced crime. Crime in a society is a very complex phenomenon and not easily explained. I remember a few years ago when Freakanomics popularized the theory that crime went down because of Roe vs Wade increased abortions, in particular abortions of troublesome minorities who cause crime, implying that criminality was correlated to race. This idea is now a widely held belief even though there are lots of things that have changed over the years that you could just as easily also correlate but are not necessarily causal.

At least with this one (lead) there is actual known scientific data showing that lead exposure does increase violent behavior and there is a causal link (lead poisoning leading to a specific sort of brain damage).

edit: ah and having just pressed post I see that someone else here was thinking of the same comparison.

What is the modern lead? BPA?