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There is a simple reason: computers and the internet. It makes people more docile and satisfies their urges. Porn for sexual urges, social media for "socializing", google and wikipedia for knowledge etc. That last part also makes everyone more educated. Which also correlates to less (blue collar) crime.
This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup. Kevin Drum (a left-leaning US journalist) has been making this argument: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime...
But lead by itself can't be the major factor behind the crime drop. Countries such as Brazil have banned leaded gas even before the United States, and crime rates are still rising dramatically. It seems clear that other factors play a more important role. Things like police effectiveness, or economics. Edit: reference for lead ban dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead Crime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
At least one was at my apartment. Macbook Pro =(
Hopefully you had everything backed up somewhere.
This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup. Kevin Drum (a left-leaning US journalist) has been making this argument: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime...
But lead by itself can't be the major factor behind the crime drop. Countries such as Brazil have banned leaded gas even before the United States, and crime rates are still rising dramatically. It seems clear that other factors play a more important role. Things like police effectiveness, or economics. Edit: reference for lead ban dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead Crime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
This article has some data about lead levels in children in Brazil: http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1...
In Brazil, Teixeira (32) has found that 11% of pipes used in the water distribution systems of 100 schools in São Paulo present lead levels above the limit considered safe by the WHO. In 2% of the water samples, the lead level was found to be five-fold higher than the highest acceptable value (
Several studies have shown that high BLL in preschool children are strongly correlated with high lead levels in house dust (33-35). This association has been attributed to dust intake from the frequent hand-to-mouth behavior of young children. Flaking lead-based paint, road dust, garden soil and airborne lead-bearing particles are believed to be the sources of lead in household dust (36).
Leaded gas has caused more exposure to the metal than any other source worldwide (37). According to the São Paulo State Health Department (19), about 80% of the lead found in urban air samples before 1982 was derived from leaded gas. Car battery manufacture is the main source of secondary lead (38), but other sources cannot be discarded.
None of that is to say that lead is the only factor of course, just that I don't think your data disproves the theory that lead plays a significant part.
If you haven't read it, Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature is a tour-de-force on the factors that have reduced violence of all kinds.
Sure policing has gotten better, and crime prevention tech has advanced, but these studies tend to ignore the fact that would-be criminals rarely leave the house anymore...
http://news.yahoo.com/detroit-crime-down-murder-rate-1736002...
And yet the murder rate is relatively stagnant, and this year reached a peak: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-los...
How to reconcile these things? Is crime really falling, or have reporting standards changed? Or, if cops can't respond to reports, do the reports ever get filed?
As a Marxist, i see an explanation of this in that the crime thrives in societies numerically dominated by proletariat: people who have nothing to lose are easily motivated into crime, much easier their children with no view of the future. When the proletariat declined in numbers, so did the crime.
“What are the facts? Again and again and again--what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"--what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"
Heinlein