On the gripping hand...
The problem is that they are often scared of the wrong things. It's not their fault, really. Separating facts from rumors is always hard work, especially for a busy parent. And the white noise generated by the experts-to say nothing of the pressure exerted by fellow parents- is so overwhelming that they can barely think for themselves. The facts they do manage to glean have usually been varnished or exaggerated or otherwise taken out of context to serve an agenda that isn't their own.
Consider the parents of an eight-year-old girl named, say, Molly. Her two best friends, Amy and Imani, each live nearby. Molly's parents know that Amy's parents keep a gun in their house, so they have forbidden Molly to play there. Instead, Molly spends a lot of time at Imani's house, which has a swimming pool in the backyard. Molly's parents feel good about having made such a smart choice to protect their daughter.
But according to the data, their choice isn't smart at all. In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. (In a country with 6 million pools, this means that roughly 550 children under the age of ten drown each year.) Meanwhile, there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 millionplus guns. (In a country with an estimated 200 million guns, this means that roughly 175 children under ten die each year from guns.) The likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn't even close: Molly is roughly 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani's house than in gunplay at Amy's.
The book also argues (in Chapter 4) that the drop in crime in the 1990s was due in large part to the legal availablity of abortion in the 1970s.
There are obvious dangers in using raw statistics to make decisions, and that's part of the book's point.
Yes, Levitt is an economist at the University of Chicago. ;-)
It's on my List...
Cheers,
Scott.
