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Freakonomics: A Rogue
Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
The book has six operational chapters dealing with six different issues ranging from schoolteachers who write the exams for their students to parents who refused to bring their child back from the day-care centre in time since the centre had begun to levy a fine for those who were late in picking up their kids. The simple conclusion is that simplistic incentives and punishments, both destined to fail miserably. If you punish teachers whose students do not perform well in exams, the teachers will have a very high incentive to channel their energies into strategies for making their students succeed in exams rather than imparting any knowledge of the subject. Then he reports on the profits made by drug dealers. Except for those at the very top, the rest are merely able to eke out a living. They do not even make enough profits to be able to live on their own away from their parents. Levitt’s scrutiny of the diverse norms for child rearing and good parenting look into the often-contradictory advice that comes from experts on what is the best way to bring up baby. While there is no definitive best way, he says, there are certain broad guidelines that do emerge when looking at quantitative information over many years. Love for the child remains important even when it is difficult to say whether spanking helps or not. The opportunities that parents can offer their children makes a lot of difference to their final achievements in life. An analysis of children’s names suggests to him that the name is a good indicator of the parents’ expectations from their child and their self-perceptions about their standing in society. Giving one’s child the formal name of "Shithead," even when pronounced as shuh-TEED or to name a girl "Temptress" might or might not encourage the children to live up to their given names. But the fact remains, Levitt points out, that personal effort on part of the child plays an important role in overcoming the shortcomings that parents might have had and the obstacles that society might have placed before the growing child. Through the 1970s to 90s, cities like New York had become dangerous to live in. People had begun to arm themselves. Walking down the street without getting mugged was seen as a sign of being lucky. Then all of a sudden the cities became safe once again. Experts attributed this to tougher law enforcement and more rigorous punishments. However, Levitt disagrees. He traces the initial upsurge in crime to the wave of unwanted teen pregnancies that marked American life. As soon as the unwanted children came of age, they took to a life of crime. In contrast, once the US allowed its young girls to have abortions, as and when they wanted, the number of unwanted births fell drastically. The children born since, in or out of wedlock, have been more loved in society. Correspondingly, they are far more conservative and are less dissatisfied with the existing systems and are more obedient of all institutions. Levitt’s conclusions are based on extensive data that has been rigorously analysed. His book is about an economist using his professional skills to explore some of the everyday puzzles of life, subjecting simple, everyday questions to the rigours of analysis and discovering that the answers are often very different from accepted wisdom. Have you ever wondered, asks Levitt, why people complain about the large amount of money spent in elections [about $ 1 billion] but do not even notice that this is also the amount that Americans spend yearly on chewing gum?
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