Steven Levitt: A Modern Day Economist

     When we thinks of economists, most of us think of people like Adam Smith or Thomas Malthus. Instead we should be thinking about the economists of today like Steven Levitt. Steven Levitt is the world renowned author of many studies that have impacted everything from car seats to sumo wrestling, but he is best known for his work on the bestselling book Freakonomics.

Steven Levitt

    Levitt graduated from Harvard in 1989 and then obtained his Ph.D in economics from MIT in 1994. He now teaches at the University of Chicago as the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor. In 2004 he won the John Bates Clark Medal for being by the American Economic Association for being the most promising economist under 40. Levitt's work on various economic topics include crime, politics and sports. The most prolific of his research topics is the impact of legalized abortion on the United States crime rate.  Levitt has said,

"The numbers we're talking about, in terms of crime, are absolutely trivial when you compare it to the broader debate on abortion. From a pro-life view of the world: If abortion is murder then we have a million murders a year through abortion. And the few thousand homicides that will be prevented according to our analysis are just nothing—they are a pebble in the ocean relative to the tragedy that is abortion. So, my own view, when we [did] the study and it hasn't changed is that: our study shouldn't change anybody's opinion about whether abortion should be legal and easily available or not. It's really a study about crime, not abortion."

Steven Levitt Teaching at the University of Chicago

    It is studies like this that take economics to a different place in society. Levitt has brought the study of economics to a new place and has shown the value of finding correlations within data is a better way to make choices. We shouldn't let our bias get in the way, we need to simply look at the facts. That is something that Levitt offers up in every study he authors, and that is something I admire and respect.

Unemployment: A Male Dominated Area?

     A new Census report finds that for the first time, more women in the workforce have bachelor’s degrees than men (37 percent vs. 35).  This is a vital sign for growth among women in the workforce. With more women going to school it means that there is a larger population of them entering the workforce with an expanded skill set. We also see the discrepancy between men and women attaining high school diplomas over men: 88 percent in women to 86 percent in men.

Women in the Workforce poster from WWII

     What this correlates to is that men and women no longer have unemployment rates that are almost even. Back in 2007 both male and female unemployment was hovering around 5 percent. However as of the census data from 2009, we see male unemployment jump to 10 percent and female unemployment only rise to 8 percent. That discrepancy is the largest since World War Two.

Growth of Women acheiving higher education

     This opens up a lot of questions about how to keep men in school and how this will effect our employment landscape in the years to come. The rise in women in the workforce will drive a cultural shift that might see traditional gender roles reversed. These changes are something our society will have to deal with in the coming years. As of today though, we must focus on not only continuing to encourage women to seek higher education, but also find new ways to entice the male populous to stay in the educational system. If we do not find ways to combat this rapidly growing discrepancy we could the current economic growth start to backslide.