1

SYG2323: Criminology

SFC/Manning

Writing Assignment (WA 2): Secondary Data Analysis (your research sources)

Total Points Possible: 50 pts.

(See Syllabus for Due Date) ________

First you must pick a topic to write your final research paper on (it must be a criminology related topic).

Then find at least two credible journal articles (hard copy journals, or electronic journal via Santa Fe’s

virtual library) on your research topic. These sources must be scholarly research based articles that have

been published, and have authors. Then write a summary analysis of the two journal articles you have

found for your research paper.

You also need to write the thesis statement, theory and primary data methodology explorations for your

final research paper. Write your introduction which tells the reader what will be explored in your term

paper including your thesis statement. Use your textbook to define and then apply a theory we have

covered in class to your research topic. Next use your textbook to define and then explore a

methodology that you would use to collect primary data on your research topic if you had the

opportunity in the future (explore examples).

Again you must demonstrate the ability to know when and how to use APA style citations to give credit

to your sources for quotes and paraphrases, and their ideologies, definitions, dates and statistics. You

also need to create an APA style reference page (at the end of your essay). Your essay format should

follow the research process listed below. I expect you to make corrections based on my feedback and

use this data in your final research paper. Four-page maximum length.

Show your ability to apply terminology from the assigned readings and classroom discussion into your

essay when appropriate. It is very important to note that this class is a discipline specific writing class

and we will be using APA style citations. You must demonstrate the ability to use the APA style tools

you have learned in-class in all your writing assignments this semester.

Type your name, writing assignment number, class meeting time and date in the upper right/left hand

corner, this header should be single spaced. The writing assignment should be in proper left align

paragraph format. The body of the text should be double spaced using a 10 or 12 font size with 1”

borders. To guarantee the assignments do not accumulate late points they must be turned in on or

before the beginning of the class period of the assigned due date. If you send the assignments as an E-

mail attachment, make sure your file is sent as a MS Word or Rich Text Format (rtf) document or I may

not be able to open it—which is the same as not receiving it. Remember, there is a loss of 5 points per

each day the assignment is late (see syllabus).

The Research Process Explored:

Abstract

-Introduction (thesis Statement)

-Methodology: Analyzing secondary data (your research sources) is what we are doing for this assignment
-Theory

-Methodology (primary data collection not conducted but explored)

Findings

Discussion & Conclusions

-References

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime:

Old Economics in New Bottles

Author(s): Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson
Source: The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 72, No. 3 (JULY, 2013), pp.
675-700
Published by: American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526056
Accessed: 11-03-2020 16:21 UTC

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime:

Old Economics in New Bottles

By Robert Chernomas* and Ian Hudson1

Abstract. This article explores the work of Steven Levitt on abortion
and crime as representative of a new wave of economists that are
redefining the mainstream of the discipline. Levitt has moved away
from formalized modeling of narrow self-interested maximization that

was a hallmark of the “old” mainstream. However, he retains the “old”

mainstream linchpins of a focus on the individual by abstracting from

the social context, and an emphasis on the ability of econometric testing
to reveal the truth. These crucial elements that Levitt retains from the

“old” mainstream create some problems of both emphasis and analysis
for his explanation for the drop in crime in the United States.

Introduction

This article explores the work of Steven Levitt, winner of the John
Bates Clark award as the most outstanding economist under the
age of 40 and best-selling popular author, as a representative of a new
wave of economists increasingly occupying tenured positions at
places like Chicago, Harvard, MIT, and in departments that follow
their lead (The Economist 2008). For these economists the discipline
is no longer constrained by the Samuelsonian requirements of
mathematical formalization based on simplifying assumptions. Like
Swedish Bank Prize winning, University of Chicago economist Gary
Becker, they apply their analysis to nontraditional areas of society.
Unlike Becker they have less of an attachment to the rational, calcu
lating, maximizing model of behavior, which were hallmarks of the
“old” mainstream in the discipline. And so Levitt is identified as
a rogue economist, a scientific sleuth, using data to go where no

‘Department of Economics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB Canada, Email:
robert.chernomas@ad.umanitoba.ca.

department of Economics, University of Manitoba, 501 Fletcher Argue Building,

Winnipeg, MB Canada, R3T 5V5, Email: ian.hudson@ad.umanitoba.ca.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 72, No. 3 tjuly. 2013).
DOI: 10.1111/ajes.l2024
© 2013 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

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676 Tlje American Journal of Economics and Sociology

economist has gone before to find unique answers to questions that
no one has asked before.

We will argue in a more profound sense he fits very comfortably
within the orthodoxy of mainstream economics by ignoring the social
roots—macrofoundations—of the phenomena being investigated in
favor of methodological individualism. In this sense, Levitt and his
“new” mainstream colleagues have not escaped the criticism of people
like Sheila Dow, Robert Heilbroner, and William Milberg, who argue

that the problem with orthodox economics is its lack of attention to
the effects of broader social forces on the individual. Levitt’s myopia

with respect to American exceptionalism, his lack of consideration
of the unique features of the American socioeconomic framework,
underscores this deficiency in his work.

This article will take up these issues with a critical examination of
Levitt’s most famous work on the relationship between abortion and
crime in the United States, which frames political issues in a manner
that neglects serious scrutiny of the system’s effect on real people and
societies. Levitt’s retention of crucial elements of the “old” mainstream

creates a narrow view of the causes of crime in the United States that

is less nuanced than those put forward by authors like Loic Wacquant,
who explicitly locate crime in a social context. But first we will locate
Levitt inside the mainstream of the economics profession.

The New Empiricists

The economics discipline has pretensions to scientific objectivity but
its more thoughtful practitioners have rightly argued that ideology
is inexorably associated with any economic analysis. For Joseph
Schumpeter, “it should be perfectly clear that there is a wide gate for

ideology to enter into this process. In fact, it enters on the very
ground floor . . . Analytical work begins with material provided by
our vision of things, and this vision is ideological almost by defini
tion” (2006: 40). Similarly, Joan Robinson claimed that “[pjolitics
involve ideology; there is no such thing as a purely economic
problem that can be settled by purely economic logic; political inter
ests and political prejudice are involved in every discussion of actual
questions” (1977: 1318).

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 677

Not very long ago, the mainstream of the discipline contained a
readily identifiable ideology. According to Dow, mainstream econo
mists most frequently assumed that people are self interested, which
means that only their own considerations enter into their utility. This

assumption is not universal. For example, Becker allows love to enter
into an individual’s utility function by positively relating others’ con
sumption to a person’s utility. However, even in the case of Becker’s
individual, who is capable of moving beyond narrow, individual
self-interest, this is considered only in the most superficial manner.
This is because Becker, and other mainstream theorists, start from
the assumption that tastes and preferences (which they view as non
economic factors) can be taken as given. So the broader social and
economic context that might influence a person’s decision is never
analyzed (Dow 2002: 23). Feminist/heterodox analysts, on the other
hand, consider the social structure that has led to a set of market
conditions and social conventions that influence individual behavior.

The social conditions are prior to the individual. How and why they
change is the means to understand the conditions under which
individuals make the choices they do. Understanding the social struc
ture, social conventions, and the labor market are critical if one is to

understand virtually any supposedly individual decision such as crime,
smoking, and divorce (Dow 2002: 24).

Heilbroner and Milberg also point out why focusing on the indi
vidual while ignoring the broader social context is problematic:

Humans do not and cannot form intelligence, organize memories or
exercise will as isolated beings, entirely self-sufficient in the mental psy
chological processes. The development of the human psyche, from the
earliest moments of infancy on, takes place through the gradual ingestion
and incorporation of the individual’s surroundings from its earliest familial
influences through its exposure to innumerable influences on other indi
viduals directly or indirectly. Thus the concept of the individual—the
analytical focus of so much conventional social science—appears most
clearly in the form of a unique distillation of social influences. In Marx’s
profound words, the individual appears as “the ensemble of social
relations,” a “chaotic conception” unless we penetrate the façade of “the
individual” to its social roots. (Heilbroner and Milberg 1995: 86)

Dow also argues that the mainstream approach was well suited to
mathematical formalization and econometric testing because it used

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678 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

very specific simplifications. In contrast, the scope for econometric
work is constrained in the heterodox approach because its “emphasis
on the social rather than the individual approach” eschews simplistic
models that are easy to test (Dow 2002: 24).

The hallmarks of the “old” mainstream were self-interested maxi

mization, the individual as the center of inquiry, and a method that
focused on mathematical formalization and econometric testing. The
question for this article is to what extent the “new” mainstream, as

represented by Levitt, has deviated from these questionable practices.
The subtitle of Freakonomics claims that Levitt is a “rogue eco

nomist,” but what exactly separated Levitt from the rest of the
economics profession in the late 1990s and early 2000s? In the
introduction to Freakonomics Levitt provides some clues. It is about
“stripping a layer or two from the surface of modern life and seeing
what is happening underneath” (Levitt and Dubner 2005: 12). So part
of what makes Levitt a “rogue” is that he questions conventional
wisdom, or at least elements of conventional wisdom, and uncovers
unpredictable, often “distant, even subtle causes” (Levitt and Dubner
2005: 12). A second component of Levitt’s method is that the
answers to these questions will “come from the data.” He makes
some very strong claims in this regard, arguing that in contrast to
morality, which is how people “would like the world to work,”
economics represents how it “actually does work” because its meas
urement tools can “reliably assess a thicket of information to deter
mine the effect of any one factor” (Levitt and Dubner 2005: 13).
Finally, when searching for these subtle, often distant, causes of life’s

seemingly perplexing enigmas, understanding how incentives are
aligned is the key to the solution.1

This is very revealing about Levitt’s economic worldview. Many of
the much-objected-to centerpieces of “old” mainstream theory have
been jettisoned. What remains is a focus on incentives, methodolo
gical individualism, and a strong belief that the truth can be revealed

if only the right questions are asked and appropriate data analyzed in
a sufficiently rigorous way.

The cutting edge in economics is, then, basically a toolkit—a set of

data-finding techniques that is bound by neither theory nor subject
matter. Levitt argues that this particular set of tools can be usefully

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 679

applied to almost any area of social enquiry since “no subject,
however, offbeat, need be beyond its reach” (Levitt and Dubner 2005:
14). Levitt places great confidence in the truth-revealing properties of

data. “I’d like to put together a set of tools that lets us catch terrorists.

I mean that’s the goal. I don’t necessarily know yet how I’d go about
it. But given the right data, I have little doubt that I could figure out
the answer” (Dubner 2003: 28). A skeptic might ask what is particu
larly “economic” about this latest direction for the discipline. Indeed,
many would say he is doing a version of quantitative sociology.

His own personal favorite areas are crime, cheating, and corruption
(Dubner 2003), but he has also delved into politics and race. His
publication list spans a wide variety of other social sciences. He has
written on schoolteachers helping their classes cheat on standardized
tests (Jacob and Levitt 2003), sumo wrestlers throwing matches to
improve their rankings (Duggan and Levitt 2002), and the systematic
fleecing of their clients by real estate agents (Levitt and Syverson
2008). In the area of crime he has inquired into the income distribu
tion within criminal gangs (Levitt and Venkatesh 2000). He has also
attempted to analyze the impact on crime of policing strategies (Levitt

1997, 2002), incarceration (Levitt 2004a), and capital punishment
(Katz et al. 2003). In the realm of politics he has looked at the impact
of interest groups on political decisions (Groseclose, Levitt, and
Snyder 1999) and dismissed the importance of campaign spending
on election results (Levitt 1994). On the subject of race he has
examined the differences in test scores (Fryer and Levitt 2004a), used
“black” names to test for discrimination (Fryer and Levitt 2004b), and
looked at the economic lives of blacks in public housing (Levitt and
Venkatesh 2001).

So Levitt may be a rogue economist in an incidental way. He has
ignored the traditional subject areas of the economy—interest rates,
stock markets, unemployment, economic growth, and corporate
behavior—in favor of areas that have normally been the purview of

other disciplines like sociology and politics. In this he is following in
the path of Chicago mainstay Becker. He has also done away with the
heavily criticized assumptions of the rational, maximizing individual
championed by Becker. Indeed, his economics is particularly devoid
of what would traditionally be described as economic theory. In the

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680 Hoe American Journal of Economics and Sociology

words of one critic of Freakonomics, “I could detect very little in the
research that depended on economic theory in anything but the most
superficial way” (DiNardo 2007: 996). He has also eschewed the
complex mathematical modeling of much of the mainstream of the
discipline in favor of a more “intuitive” approach to puzzle solving.

Levitt’s Influence

Measuring an academic’s influence on the discipline is always difficult.

If success is measured in terms of name recognition and book sales,
Levitt has succeeded far beyond the wildest dreams of any social
scientist. He is best known to the broader public for the best seller
Freakonomics (over 3 million copies sold), or perhaps now the
slightly less successful sequel Superfreakonomics, but he has also
garnered considerable recognition within the discipline. Since 1997 he
has been at the University of Chicago, the pinnacle of mainstream
economics, where he earned tenure in only two years (Dubner 2003).
He has published regularly in the top mainstream economics journals.
In 2003 he won the John Bates Clark Medal awarded to the best young
(under 40) economist in the United States.

But rapid promotion, professional awards, and blockbuster book
sales do not necessarily demonstrate that Levitt is actually influenc
ing the academic world. In an effort to determine Levitt’s academic
influence, we will examine his impact in two areas. The most obvious
is the economics profession. In addition, since we will use Levitt’s
work on abortion and criminality as our illustration of Levitt’s
methods, we will examine his influence in the area of crime.

The standard measure of academic influence is citation counting.
One of the problems with a count of total citations as a measure of
influence is that it inflates the value of an author who produces a great

many articles, even if none of them have a particularly large impact.
In an effort to capture impact of authors who produce works that
generate considerable interest, a measure called the h-index has
become a widely accepted indicator. The h-index combines the
number of articles with the number of citations for each article so that

a score of 7 indicates that the author has produced 7 articles, each of
which is cited at least 7 times. An h-score of 10 would result from an

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 681

author having 10 articles with at least 10 citations each. We will use
both total citations and the h-index to measure Levitt’s influence in the

academic world.

Levitt is widely cited. Research Papers in Economics (RePEc)
collects citation information on over 1 million working papers and
journal articles on its database. As of May 2011, Levitt ranked in the
top 5 percent of economists in total citations (389th of over 24,000
authors) and h-index (203rd) (IDEAS 2011a). Although the RePEc
citation count provides some indication of author influence, it has
some important limitations because of the voluntary nature of
the database, which contains a large number of working papers and
unpublished works. There are a number of alternative databases that
could be used, including Web of Science and Scopus, that focus more
on published works. We will use a relatively new program, Harzing’s
Publish or Perish (HPOP), that provides citation information gathered
from Google Scholar. The advantage of HPOP is that it is the broadest
citation list, including book chapters and dissertations that are not in
the other databases. The indices used in HPOP are also less sensitive

to typographical errors than the Web of Science (Long, Boggess, and
Jennings 2011: 109).

In order to compare Levitt to the very top rank of his contempo
raries, his academic influence, as measured by citations and the
h-index, will be compared to his fellow John Bates Clark winners,
Matthew Rabin (awarded in 2001) and Daron Acemoglu (awarded in
2005). These authors were chosen because they have relatively similar
career lengths, avoiding the bias in favor of academics with longer
careers inherent in citation counting. HPOP citations data up to June
2011 were searched for articles produced by the three authors
up to and including 2010. The search was conducted in the areas of
business and economics and the social sciences and humanities. The

data for each author were checked to ensure that the articles were not

written by another author with a similar name. The articles that were

duplicated in the data due to spelling mistakes or abbreviated titles
were combined into one entry. The results are in Table 1.

As measured by citations and the h-index, Levitt’s influence is less
than Acemoglu, but is comparable to Rabin. It should be noted that
comparing anyone to Acemoglu is setting the bar remarkably high.

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682 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Table 1

A Comparison of Levitt with Contemporary Winners of John
Bates Clark Medal

Citations Citation/article h-index

Levitt (awarded in 2003) 9,268 72 45
Rabin (awarded in 2001) 14,702 200 33

Acemoglu (awarded in 2003) 29,715 105 73

Calculated from HPOP: Citations of articles written up to and including 2010.

According to the RePEc data base he has the sixth highest h-index in
the profession (IDEAS 2011b). Rabin has more citations overall and
per paper, but Levitt’s higher h-index demonstrates that he has written

more widely cited papers. Levitt’s citations may not quite rank up with

the absolute top echelon of the economics world, but he can certainly
lay claim to an impressive number of widely cited papers.

Levitt’s influence on the economics profession has been more about
the broad areas of method and expansion of subject boundaries than
prominence in any one particular subject area. This would suggest that
citation counting would understate his impact. He was not the first
to discover the empirical advantages of clever natural experiments,
but his success has influenced the research directions of the young
scholars in applied microeconomics who will be the future of the
profession. As James Poterba remarked, Levitt’s “research has high
lighted the importance of devoting attention to well thought-out
identification strategies as well as to the econometric tools that are
used in applied economic analysis. Steve has inspired others to follow
his lead, and in the process his influence has exceeded his own direct
research contributions” (Poterba 2005: 197). In The Economist’s 2008

survey of economics’ rising stars, two (Jesse Shapiro and Roland Fryer)

were “recognisably the intellectual heirs of Mr. Levitt. They share the

same knack for finding ingenious ways to answer unlikely questions,
often by plundering forgotten troves of data” {The Economist 2008).
In their comment on the economics profession, Roger Backhouse
and Steven Dulauf identified Levitt’s focus on natural experiments as
one of the major streams in modern microeconomics (2009). David

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 683

Colander surveyed 230 graduate students from seven of the top
economics departments in the United States for his book The Making
of An Economist Redux (2007). What he found was that “more and
more ‘Freakonomics’ is becoming mainstream economics. That is the
research that young economists see themselves doing” (Uchitelle
2006). The top mainstream economics departments in the United
States are now littered with young economists emulating Levitt’s
approach, on a wide range of issues from government fiscal policy to
economic development to black underachievement.

If impact in a discipline can be associated with the number of other
authors citing your work, Levitt also appears to be influential in the
area of crime. If only Levitt’s articles on crime are considered, his
publication record compares favorably with the top authors in crimi
nology and criminal justice. Long, Boggess, and Jennings (2011) used
HPOP to examine the citations of the top 10 “stars” in criminology and

criminal justice. The top three authors by citation count were Alex
Piquero, Joan Petersilia, and Robert Brame. To compare Levitt with
these three authors, his non-crime-related works were deleted, leaving

his articles in the areas of policing, incarceration, the decline in crime,

gang finances, and corruption. The steps that were used in the citation

ranking of economists were replicated for Levitt’s crime articles and
each of the three criminology and criminal justice authors. The results
are in Table 2.

Levitt’s citations on crime alone would place him among the most
influential of authors in criminology and criminal justice. There is a

Table 2

A Comparison of Levitt with the Top 3 Criminologists and
Criminal Justice Authors by Citation

Citations Citation/article h-index

Levitt (crime only) 4,776 106 29

Piquero 5,714 22 42

Petersilia 4,672 27 36

Brame 3,163 41 27

Source. Calculated from HPOP: Citations of articles written up to and including 2010.

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684 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

difference between disciplines in that Levitt has produced far fewer
articles, but each article is cited far more times. Both Piquero and
Brame have been publishing articles over a period roughly compa
rable to Levitt. Petersilia has had a longer career, biasing the results
in her favor. Having said that, in terms of total citations Levitt ranks

just behind Piquero. Using the h-index, Levitt would rank just behind
Petersilia. If Levitt had produced no other work besides his research
on crime, he would have had a distinguished career in that area.

The extent to which other authors cite Levitt’s work suggests that he

has a very respectable impact among the economics profession and an
impressive influence in the area of crime. His influence in economics
is understated by focusing on citations because he has popularized a
new direction in microeconomics, especially for young economists.

Case Study: Abortion and Crime

Levitt’s work on the causes of the fall in crime in the United States is

an excellent example of this new direction in mainstream economics.
It is outside the traditional economic subject areas. It involves a clever
natural experiment in its empirical work and it arrives at a counter
intuitive, “surprising” result. There are three versions of Levitt’s famous

abortion and crime study that move chronologically from the most
empirical and academic to the most popular. The first (with John
Donohue) appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QfE) in
2001, the second in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) in 2004,

and finally, it was popularized in a chapter in Freakonomics titled
“Where have all the criminals gone?” Since the Freakonomics chapter
contributes little in the way of new analysis this article will focus on

the first two studies. The United States witnessed a significant, long
lived, and completely unexpected decline in crime rates starting about
1991. This understandably caught many commentators by surprise
since crime rates, especially for violent crime, had been increasing at
an alarming rate in the 1980s. Graphic predictions of “chaos” in U.S.
cities, made even by academic commentators (Levitt 2004b: 169), not
only failed to materialize but crime rates fell dramatically. Levitt’s first

contribution to this debate, which was completely consistent with his
desire to find surprising or unexpected causes, was to link declining

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 685

crime rates in 1991 to the legalization of abortion with Roe v. Wade
in 1973.

The logic behind Levitt’s hypothesized connection rests on two
assumptions. First, aborted babies are unwanted, which would seem
relatively uncontroversial. Second, unwanted babies are more likely
than average to grow up to be criminals. It is certainly true that the
birth rates of groups that Levitt considered “at risk” for future crimi

nal activity dropped more than the average as a result of the legali
zation of abortion. The decrease in birth rates was twice as great
for teenage and nonwhite mothers as it was for the nonteen, white
population. Levitt also noted the same trend comparing black and
white women (Donohue and Levitt 2001: 387). Parents with

unwanted children were less nurturing and more likely to resent
their children. Children of mothers who were denied an abortion

were more likely to be involved in crime and have poorer life
prospects even when controlling for the income, age, education, and
health of the mother (Donohue and Levitt 2001: 388). In his own

“back of the envelope” calculations he argues that since “at-risk”
groups—blacks, teens and unwed mothers—are both more likely to
commit crimes and more likely to have decreasing birth rates due to
legalized abortion, the crime rate should fall. To take just the black
population as an example, Levitt argues that since homicide by
black youths is nine times that of whites and the drop in fertility of
black women three times as great as for whites (12 percent to 4
percent), the homicide rate will drop by more than just the cohort
effect (the impact of having less high crime 18-24 year olds as a
result of the legalization of abortion). In Dubner’s New York Times
Magazine article, the connection was summarized as: “Unwanted
ness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abor
tion leads to less crime” (Dubner 2003).

In support of this hypothesis he produced four pieces of evidence
in his QJE article. Most obviously, the timing works out. The crime rate

(Levitt uses three types of crime to calculate the crime rate in this
article: property crime, violent crime, and murder) dropped dramati
cally starting in 1991, 18 years after the 1973 legalization. Since most
criminals’ peak crime years are between 18 and 24 the increased
number of abortions should start to show up exactly in 1991 and

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686 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

should have a cumulatively larger impact over time. Second, five states

were early movers, legalizing abortion in 1970, three years before the
rest of the nation. Crime rates in these five states started to drop three

years before the rest of the country. Third, Levitt uses panel data to

estimate that states with higher abortion levels in the 1970s and early
1980s had lower crime rates from 1985 to 1997. This connection

remains significant even when other factors such as the level of
incarceration, the number of police, lagged state welfare generosity,
the presence of concealed handgun laws, per capita beer consump
tion, and measures of the state’s economic well-being (the unemploy
ment rate, income per capita, and poverty rate) are factored in to the
model (Donohue and Levitt 2001: 401). In this regression Levitt also
finds that incarceration rates and more police lead to fewer murders
while a higher state unemployment rate is associated with significant
increases in property crime, but not violent crime (Donohue and Levitt

2001: 405). Fourth, Levitt finds that crime rates drop much more
rapidly among the cohorts after abortion is legalized than those born
prior to legalized abortion (Donohue and Levitt 2001: 410).

The estimated magnitude of the impact of legalized abortion on
crime is large. Levitt finds that it is responsible for up to 50 percent of
the total drop in crime rates, making it much more important than
any of the other, more popular explanations for the decrease in
crime (Donohue and Levitt 2001: 382). He even makes a back of

the envelope calculation that societal saving resulting from legalized
abortion’s effect on crime may be as much as $30 billion annually,
a not inconsiderable sum (Donohue and Levitt 2001: 414). In his

conclusion, Levitt does write something of a disclaimer, claiming that
these reductions could have been achieved through other methods
like providing better environments for children or other forms of
contraception (Donohue and Levitt 2001: 415).

The JEP article was not an original empirical contribution as was the

QJE piece. Rather, it combined some of his previous research with a
review of other quantitative work to distinguish between the factors
that did and did not cause the crime rate to fall in the 1990s. His

reading of the literature is that innovative, New-York-City-style police

tactics, a strong economy, gun control laws, changing demographics,
increased use of capital punishment, and laws that permit carrying

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 687

Table 3

Levitt’s Causes of Decline in U.S. Crime (percentage decrease
in the crime rate)

Homicide Violent Property

Total Decline 43 33 29
Contribution of Individual Factors

Increased Police 5-6 5-6 5-6

Increased Prison Pop 12 12 8
Decline in Crack 6 3 0

Abortion 10 10 10

Source. Levitt (2004b).

concealed weapons had very little or no impact. On the other hand,
the increased number of police, rising prison population, the dwin
dling use of crack, and, obviously, legalized abortion all had a
significant impact.

Further, Levitt attempts to roughly quantify the magnitude of
each of the significant factors in reducing homicide, violent crime,
and property crime (see Table 3), as well as speculate about the
cost effectiveness of a few of the measures. The number of police
increased by 14 percent during the 1990s and Levitt estimates this was
responsible for a 5 to 6 percent reduction in all three types of crime.
This would create around $20 billion in benefits for an $8.4 billion

outlay on police. The $50 billion spent on incarceration are also
outweighed by the benefits of an estimated 8 percent drop in property

crime and 12 percent fall in homicide and violent crime, although
Levitt does warn that imprisoning large numbers of people may result
in declining marginal benefits and have undesirable social conse
quences (Levitt 2004b: 179). It is worth mentioning here that Levitt’s
Freakonomics explanation for the increase in crime in the 1980s was
the decrease in monitoring and penalties in the criminal justice system.

“America was getting softer on crime ‘for fear of sounding racist’, as
the economist Gary Becker has written, since African-American and
Hispanics commit a disproportionate share of felonies. So, if you were
the kind of person who might want to commit a crime, the incentives

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688 Tloe American Journal of Economics and Sociology

were lining up in your favor: a slimmer likelihood of being convicted
and if convicted a shorter prison term” (Levitt and Dubner 2005: 122).
The decline in crack and its associated violence had a more modest

effect decreasing homicide by 6 percent and property crime by little
or nothing, although Levitt admits that the evidence on this score is

very limited (Levitt 2004b: 181). He estimates a more modest impact
for abortion in the JEP article compared to the original QJE piece,
claiming it accounts for a 10 percent decline in homicide, violent
crime, and property crime (one-third of the total).

There is Such a Thing as Society:
The Importance of Economic Context

It should hardly come as a surprise that a paper arguing that safer
streets have been caused by abortion should spark considerable
controversy. Considering the faith that Levitt places in the truth
revealing properties of creative natural experiments, his research has
attracted considerable criticism on empirical grounds. Critics of Levitt’s

empirical work have taken him to task on a number of fronts, from
the inappropriateness of his data to his poor choice of tests (Lott and
Whitley 2007; Foote and Goetz 2008; Joyce 2009; DiNardo 2007).
The uncertainty created by these criticisms reveals that Levitt’s claim

about well-defined research and careful selection of data revealing
the undisputed “truth” of an issue, especially one as controversial
and difficult to demonstrate as the link between legalizing abortion
and crime, is overly simplistic. It is possible that Levitt may not have
succeeded even on his own, very narrow terms. Further, given Levitt’s
abandonment of both theory and broader context, if he cannot
demonstrate empirical “truth” he is left with little else.

Levitt’s focus on legalized abortion as the main factor in the reduc

tion in U.S. crime in the 1990s is particularly revealing about the way
he views the economic world. Crucially, he is very dismissive of
broader macro economic factors, or the social context in the reduc

tion in crime, while focusing on a “surprising” explanation. In his QJE
article the broader context is treated as a control variable, while in the

JEP article economic factors are more explicitly considered but only in
a very rudimentary way.

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 689

As was mentioned in the introduction, Levitt does not view himself

as much of a theoretician. While moving away from “old” mainstream

economics’ complicated mathematical models with their implausibly
narrow and unrealistic assumptions has its advantages, jettisoning all
economic theory might not. This is nicely highlighted in his discussion

about the relationship between the economy and crime. The most
famous “old” mainstream theory of the economics of crime is that of

fellow University of Chicago economist Becker, who uses the assump
tions of a rational, self-interested, maximizing individual to argue that

the decision to commit a crime is simply the result of a calculation
of the costs and benefits. Crime will be reduced when the costs are

increased (through increased policing or jail times) or benefits
decreased. According to Becker’s model, higher noncrime income
should reduce the incentive for criminal activity. Levitt argues that

while this might be true for crimes with financial gain, it is likely to be

less important for more violent crimes. Further, he argues that even
theoretically there is an uncertain connection between the economy
and crime because increased incomes might lead to a greater number
of activities that are related to crime, like “alcohol consumption,

frequenting nightclubs and owning a car” (Levitt 2004b: 170). As
evidence for the lack of importance of economic factors Levitt cites a
number of other studies that find only a small, although statistically

significant, connection between property crime and the unemploy
ment rate (or other economic measures like the income of low-wage
workers) and no relationship at all between economic measures and
violent crime. He concludes that the only likely mechanism through
which the economy is likely to impact crime is by providing the
necessary tax revenue to pay for police and jails (Levitt 2004b: 170).

There are both theoretical and empirical problems with this dis
missal. Theoretically, it is not clear why Levitt would dismiss the link
between violent crime and a strong economy. In keeping with Beck
er’s rational model, people with higher incomes and steady jobs have
much more to lose from long-term incarceration than those living
an unrewarding life outside of the penal system. Less in keeping with
Becker’s model, life in desperate economic conditions contains far
more pressure and tension, which can often lead to violence. Finally,
Levitt appears to be ignoring the strong connection between violent

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690 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

crime and economic crime in many situations. This is especially
curious since Levitt does make this connection later in the article when

he argues that the decline in crack sales (a crime for financial gain) has

reduced homicide rates (Levitt 2004b: 181). One problem with Levitt’s
analysis of the link between the economy and crime is that it lacks
a theoretical underpinning, even one as crude and individualistic as
Becker’s, which leads to some problematic inconsistencies.

Given the lack of theoretical underpinnings it is very difficult to
criticize the assumptions on which Levitt’s analysis is based. However,
his dismissal of the economy as a factor in the reduction in crime is
based on a fairly selective review of the empirical literature. Levitt
argues that “empirical estimates of the impact of macroeconomic
variables on crime have been generally consistent across studies”
(Levitt 2004b: 170). Yet, this is not really a consensus opinion. Using
an economic model similar to that of Becker, Jeffrey Grogger argues
that in the 1980s poor job prospects created an incentive towards
the illegal drug trade and away from the legitimate job market. He
estimated the impact of young people’s wages and youth crime and
found that, holding other factors constant, a 1 percent decline in
wages would lead to a 1 percent increase in crime. Given that real
wages for youth declined by 22 percent in the 1980s, this factor
would be responsible for a substantial increase in crime during this
decade (Grogger 2006). After surveying the literature, Joel Wallman
and Alfred Blumstein have no difficulty finding empirical support for

a connection between an improving economy and decreasing crime
in the 1990s. In fact, every study cited by Wallman and Blumstein
suggests a strong link between the decrease in crime and an improv
ing economy. This may have been because the studies cited by these
authors focus more specifically on youth unemployment and wages as
opposed to the general unemployment rate. Wallman and Blumstein’s
conclusion is a more nuanced acknowledgment that in the debate
between Levitt and others on the connection between the economy
and crime, the jury is still out (Wallman and Blumstein 2006: 337-339).

Although here we are most concerned with the evidence connect
ing the broader economic context to crime, it is worth noting that the
evidence on one of Levitt’s “other factors” is also more controversial

than he lets on in the JEP or Freakonomics. He argues that increasing

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 691

the number of police had an important (and cost-effective) impact. Yet

others are not as convinced. McCrary (2002) found an important error
in Levitt’s original 1997 study connecting police numbers to crime.
When McCrary tried to replicate Levitt’s finding after the error had
been corrected, he found that increasing police had no significant
impact on crime. Wallman and Blumstein are equally skeptical of
Levitt’s alternative estimate2 that was supposed to correct for McCrary’s

discovery, arguing that “findings that don’t make sense should at least

raise questions” (Wallman and Blumstein 2006: 335). They are par
ticularly concerned with Levitt’s finding that increased police numbers
were related to a decrease in homicide but an increase in serious

assault. Wallman and Blumstein argue that common sense would
suggest that since murder is less likely to be deterred by police
presence than violent crime, Levitt’s incongruous findings should be
viewed with considerable suspicion (Wallman and Blumstein 2006:
335). Again the point here is not to say that Levitt is unequivocally
incorrect in stating that more police reduce crime. Rather, that given

the very mixed existing literature on both policing and the economic
context his dismissal of the economy and acceptance of policing
seems, at best, somewhat selective.

Levitt’s dismissal of the broad macro economic context, and failure
to even address distributional issues or social context in which U.S.

crime occurs, is in sharp contrast to other efforts at explaining crime.
Perhaps the most well known of the authors who place crime in its
social and economic context is Wacquant. Wacquant argues that it
was the booming economy of the 1990s that was the largest factor in
the decrease in crime, accounting for as much as 30 percent of the
decrease in the crime rate. According to Wacquant, while economic
growth did not lift many youths from the urban ghetto, since many of

the jobs were temporary and low wage, the Latino population espe
cially benefited from the upturn in the unskilled labor market. The
young black population also responded to the improved economy
by attending postsecondary education in much greater numbers,
reducing their involvement in street crime (Wacquant 2005: 101).

In addition to a much more careful examination of the economic

context that leads to crime, Wacquant pays more attention to the social

conditions in high-crime areas. He argues that the increase in female

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692 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

immigration with greater opportunity in ethnic labor market niches
helped reduce the crime rate at least on the borders of the ghettos. In

addition, younger siblings actually took to heart the cautionary tale
that was their older brothers’ life of crime. The violence associated

with drug dealing also declined as oligopolistic gangs signed peace
treaties. Finally, Wacquant argues that some credit should be given to
the social pressures of those who organized to rid their neighborhoods

of crime (Wacquant 2005: 102-103).
Part of Levitt’s lack of attention to the social and economic condi

tions that give rise to crime in the United States is rooted in his failure

to contrast the unique situation in the United States with other nations.

While Levitt is exploring the decline in crime in the United States
rather than the difference in crime between nations, focusing on the
former while ignoring the latter downplays the extent to which U.S.
violent crime is exceptional in the industrialized world, a fact that
would encourage an analysis contrasting the broader social and
economic context in the United States compared to other, less violent
nations. As Wacquant points out, crime in the United States is high, but

not abnormally so. In the 2000 International Crime Victimization
Survey (ICVS) the United States tied for seventh highest of the 17
countries in the study in terms of crime incidence (the number of
crimes per 100 inhabitants). It actually has a lower incidence rate than
Sweden and the Netherlands, is about equal to Canada, but is con
siderably worse than Japan and Switzerland (Van Kesteren, Mayhew,
and Nieuwbeerta 2000: 38). The big difference is that the United States
has a problem with more violent crime. In 1991, when U.S. crime rates

were at their height, the U.S. murder rate for males ages 15-24 (24.4
per 100,000) was approximately 10 times higher than in Canada (2.6),
Sweden (2.3), and the United Kingdom (2.0), 25 times higher than in
Germany (0.9), and 50 times higher than in Japan (0.5) (Wolff, Rutten,

and Bayers 1992: 116). Even after the significant decline in crime rates

during the 1990s the United States still had much higher murder rates.

Between 1999 and 2001 the United States averaged 5.5 homicides each
year per 100,000 people. In Canada this was 1.77, the E.U. average
was 1.59 (Barclay and Tavares 2003: 10). This homicide rate is for the
whole population rather than the high-crime cohort of youth. In 1998,

after much of the fall in homicide rates, U.S. youth (age 10-29) had a

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 693

homicide rate of 11 per 100,000. This is over six times the Canadian
rate (1.7), 12 times the rate in the United Kingdom (0.9), 18 times the
French rate (0.6), and 27 times the Japanese rate (0.4) (WHO 2002:
28-29). It is not just murder that was high in the United States even
after the 1990s decline. In 2000 the rate of violent crime in the United

States was more than double that of Canada (500 per 100,000 people
vs. 220). The United States had 324 aggravated assaults for every
100,000 population while the Canadian rate was less than half of that
at 143 (Statistics Canada 2001: 5).

These international comparisons do not disprove Levitt’s crime
abortion connection for the United States. He is, after all, attempting
to explain the drop in the rate of U.S. crime rather than why its level

is so exceptional internationally. This requires a focus on what has
changed in the United States rather than what is different between the

United States and other nations. Yet, his focus on the drop in the U.S.

rate, and lack of attention to the gap in international rates betrays his
focus on the individual rather than the context in which the individual

operates. Levitt’s focus on the “big surprise” and commitment to
methodological individualism causes him to neglect key questions
about the social and economic context that makes the United States

such a uniquely violent society.
Other scholars have attempted, with some success, to do just this.

Wacquant places the high U.S. rate of violent crime firmly in the
unique U.S. social and economic context, arguing that it is due to
prevalence of handguns, a deep rooted illegal street economy in the
impoverished districts of urban areas, a lack of a social welfare system,
and racial segregation (Wacquant 2005: 97-98). Other authors have
also established a link between violent crime and the differing eco
nomic contexts. To provide one example, Hsieh and Pugh (1993) used
a meta study to demonstrate consistent correlations between income
inequality and homicide among nations and U.S. states.

Levitt’s one comparison with the European Union is to demonstrate
that the U.S. drop in crime (rather than its abnormally high level) was

exceptional by showing that U.S. crime rates decreased by far more than

those in the European Union. For example, E.U. homicide rates fell by

4 percent between 1995 and 1999 while they dropped 28 percent in the
United States (Levitt 2004b: 166). However, even if one were to focus

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694 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

on merely the reduction in crime, as opposed to the level, between
nations, Levitt does not capture the different contexts. Most obviously,

it is much more unlikely that a country with a very low homicide rate,

like most of the European Union, would be able to achieve the same
reductions as one with a high rate. It is also worth remarking that, as
Wacquant argues about France, these were not particularly good
economic times in much of Europe compared the United States, so if the

economy were a factor it should lead to an improved crime statistics in

the United States compared to the European Union.
A better comparison is most likely Canada. Canada managed a

similar crime rate reduction between 1991 and 2001 while the number

of police per person fell 9 percent and the ratio of those in jail
to the total population decreased 7 percent (in the United States these
increased by 10 percent and 47 percent, respectively) (Wacquant 2005:
100). This is not to suggest that the police were not an important factor

in the United States. Uniformed police in NYC increased from 27,000
to 41,000 from 1993 to 2001, a remarkable increase in enforcement.

By 2001 NYC (population 8 million) had half as many uniformed
police as the whole of France (population 60 million), heavily con
centrated in particular “problem” urban areas (Wacquant 2005: 106).
What this international comparison does suggest is a slightly different
cost-benefit analysis than Levitt produced in the JEP. If France can
achieve a similar crime rate and a much lower rate for violent crime

with a fraction of the number of police officers used in the United
States, and Canada can achieve similar crime reductions while impris
onment and police decline, are these not better costs and benefits?
Societal and economic changes that would create lower crime with
less police, as is the case in Canada and France, is surely more
desirable than less crime with more police. Again we see that Levitt’s
explanation for the decline in U.S. crime rate may be dubious. Further,
his focus on the decline in U.S. crime rather than the fact that the

United States has a much higher violent crime rate than elsewhere

ignores the unique magnitude of U.S. violent crime and prevents
questioning just what it is about the United States that creates so many
violent individuals. This problem is exacerbated by Levitt’s focus on a

“surprising” but policy-empty explanation of abortion as the principal
cause for the fall in crime in the United States.

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 695

Conclusion

The assumptions and methodology of the “old” mainstream, repre
sented by the self-interested, maximizing individual, mathematical
formalization, and econometric testing, have been trenchantly criti
cized by those outside the mainstream. This article has argued that
the “new” mainstream, as illustrated by Levitt’s analysis of crime in the

United States, still runs afoul of many of these criticisms. Further, the
elements of the “old” mainstream that are maintained in Levitt’s work

create some important problems with how he analyzes U.S. crime.
We can examine Levitt’s work on abortion and crime by looking at

the extent to which it still uses the three “old” mainstream linchpins:

self-interested maximization; a focus on the individual rather than
on the social context; and use of modeling and econometric testing.
Unlike much of the “old” mainstream Levitt’s analysis does not rely

exclusively on the assumption of individual self-interest. In other
works Levitt (Levitt and Dubner 2005) does analyze how social
influences, like morality, can influence individual decisions, although
as DiNardo (2007) pointed out, he does so in an ad-hoc manner. Levitt
does not create formal models that explicitly assume individual self
interest and then work though maximizing conditions. On the other
hand, Levitt’s analysis on crime and abortion certainly stresses the
importance of incentives. He even borrows from the self-interested
individual when he emphasizes the decreasing costs of crime to the
individual in the 1980s because of what he argued was a relaxed
attitude toward crime and punishment. Interestingly, in a later article,

Levitt appears to be defending the “old” mainstream version of homo
economicus against attacks from behavioral economists and their
inconvenient laboratory results that show people are much less self
interested than economists had assumed them to be. According to

Levitt, when experiments are moved out of the lab and into the field

people behave in a much more self-interested manner, supporting
the assumptions of the “old” mainstream (Levitt and List 2008).

If Levitt does not universally follow the “old” mainstream in explic

itly modeling human actions as self-interested maximization, he does
take the level of analysis as the individual. This is not to say that he

completely ignores all social influences in his analysis on crime. He

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696 Tloe American Journal of Economies and Sociology

does test to see if economic conditions like unemployment have an
impact (although they are dismissed in the JEP article with a fairly
selective reading of the existing literature). Yet, compared to Wac
quant, his attention to social context, even within the United States, is

superficial. Further, the extent to which the United States is an outlier

compared to other nations in terms of violent crime is never explored.

Although in a later article on the connection between unemployment
and crime Levitt does call for more international comparisons (Levitt
2001: 388), the difference between national social and economic
contexts is not the subject of enquiry as it has been for other
researchers like Wacquant. Levitt focuses on the criminals instead of
the society that spawns them in record numbers.

The econometric critique can also apply to Levitt, who definitely
shares the “old” mainstream’s commitment to empirical testing. While

his models do not push the boundaries of econometric theory, he has
a very firm belief in the ability of his creative testing to reveal the truth.

The difficulty with this dependence in his study of abortion and crime

is that the truth has been very elusive, with other researchers able to
cast doubt on his results. Further, Levitt’s interpretation of empirical
support for what did and did not decrease crime in the United States
seems to be a little selective, and results in conclusions that down
played the broad economic context while stressing the criminal justice
factors like increased policing. These conclusions are not as univer
sally shared as he makes them out to be in the JEP article. Dow’s
criticism about the limits of econometric testing to deal with broad
social context applies just as readily to Levitt as it did the “old”
mainstream.

Although Levitt has moved from formalized modeling of narrow
self-interested maximization, he maintains the focus on the individual

by abstracting from the social context and, if anything, he places an
even stronger emphasis on the ability of econometric testing to reveal
the truth. He, therefore, still runs afoul of the feminist/heterodox

critique of the “old” mainstream expressed by critics like Dow, Heil
broner, and Milberg. The crucial elements that Levitt retains from the

“old” mainstream create some problems of both emphasis and analysis
for his explanation for the drop in crime in the United States. His focus

on a “surprising” explanation, devoid of theory or context, has not

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Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime 697

been unassailable on its own empirical grounds. His lack of serious
consideration of social context in the United States leads him to some

misleading conclusions about the reasons for the drop in crime. His
choice to focus on the U.S. decline exclusively, while ignoring the
much lower levels of violent crime in other countries, black box the

unique social and economic factors that make the United States such
an exceptional case. Levitt’s surprising empirical works have gener
ated considerable acclaim and substantial book sales but his reliance

on some of the “old” economic mainstream conventions creates

an analysis that is inferior to that of Wacquant. However, the kind of
analysis done by Wacquant is very difficult for individually focused,
econometrically obsessed researchers. An analysis of crime cannot be
torn from context and history.

Notes

1. John DiNardo argues that Levitt’s definition of incentives is perhaps
too flexible. It is basically a “two part tautology: when incentives matter
they matter. When incentives don’t matter it is because of moral incentives”
(DiNardo 2007: 996).

2. Levitt used the number of firefighters as a proxy for the number of
police in an effort to get away from the endogeniety problem that connects
the number of police to the amount of crime.

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• Contents

p. [675]
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• Issue Table of Contents

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 72, No. 3 (JULY, 2013) pp. 531-798
Front Matter
Mutual Help Networks and Social Transformation in Japan [pp. 531-564]
Between Rules and Incentives: Uncovering Hayek’s Moral Economy [pp. 565-592]
Post-Socialist Culture and Entrepreneurship [pp. 593-626]
Deposits, Loans, and Banking: Clarifying the Debate [pp. 627-644]
Theory and Empirics of Democracy and Crime Revisited: How Much Further Can We Go with Existing Data and Methodologies? [pp. 645-674]
Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime: Old Economics in New Bottles [pp. 675-700]
New and Current Evidence on Determinants of Aggregate Federal Personal Income Tax Evasion in the United States [pp. 701-731]
Iranian Disease: Why a Developing Country’s Government Did Not Listen to Economists’ Advices [pp. 732-760]
Do Business Executives Give More to Their Alma Mater? Longitudinal Evidence from a Large University [pp. 761-778]
A Mesoeconomic Approach to Socioeconomics [pp. 779-798]
Back Matter

God Imagery and Opposition to Abortion and Capital Punishment: A Partial Test of
Religious Support for the Consistent Life Ethic
Author(s): James D. Unnever, John P. Bartkowski and Francis T. Cullen
Source: Sociology of Religion, Vol. 71, No. 3 (FALL 2010), pp. 307-322
Published by: Oxford University Press
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Sociobgy of Religion 2010, 71:3 307-322
doi:10.1093/socrel/srq046

Advance Access Publication 27 May 2010

God Imagery and Opposition to Abortion
and Capital Punishment: A Partial Test of
Religious Support for the Consistent Life
Ethic*

James D. Unnever
University of South Fbrida-Sarasota

John P. Bartkowski
University of Texas at San Antonio

Francis T. Cullen
University of Cincinnati

Abortion and the death penalty are two of the most contentious issues in American public life.
Previous scholarship has documented religious variations in attitudes toward each of these hotly con-
tested issues. However, scant research has explored how religious factors affect opposition to both
abortion and capital punishment, two key elements of a consistent life ethic. This study offers a
partial test of religious support for the consistent life ethic by examining the extent to which the
nature and quality of the relationship between God and the religious believer fosters opposition to
both abortion and capital punishment. Using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, we find
that a close relationship with a loving God predicts opposition to both abortion and the death
penalty net of other religious factors and covariates. We conclude by discussing the implications of
our findings and delineating promising directions for future research.

Key words: religion; abortion; capital punishment; death penalty; god image; consistent
life ethic.

INTRODUCTION

Views about abortion and the death penalty remain central to debates
over public policy (Fried 1988; Mouw and Sobel 2001; Welch et al 1995).

*Direct correspondence to James D. Unnever, University of South Fkmda-Sarasota, 8350
N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34243, USA. E-mail: unnever@sar.usf.edu. The authors
express their gratitude to the editor and reviewers at Sociology of Religion for insightful comments
on previous versions of this manuscript, but claim full responsibility for the analyses and interpret-
ations presented herein.

© The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association
for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

307

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308 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

Religiosity has been shown to influence attitudes toward abortion (Ellison
et al 2005; Gay and Lynxwiler 1999; Hertel and Hughes 1987; Jelen and
Wilcox 2003) as well as support for the death penalty (Grasmick and McGill
1994; Jacobs et al 2005; Stack 2003; Young 1992; Young and Thompson
1995). With only a few exceptions, however, these streams of research have
developed largely as parallel literatures.

Our study examines the degree to which Americans express attitudinal
opposition to both abortion and capital punishment, given that both of these
actions deal directly with the state endorsing the taking of life. Our investi’
gation extends previous research by highlighting the nature and quality of a
believer’s relationship to a loving God as a potential source of attitudinal con-
sistency on these issues. We hypothesize that Americans who have a close
relationship with a loving God will be more likely to oppose both abortion and
the death penalty.

This investigation has clear implications for the study of what has been called
the “consistent life ethic.” Advanced most strongly by the Catholic Church, this
ethic embraces the view that life should be preserved under all, or nearly all, cir-
cumstances. The consistent life ethic thus endorses the protection of human life
through opposition to abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, stem cell research,
and war (Hipsher 2007). Regrettably, extant national data sets do not allow us to
examine the potential impact of holding a loving image of God on support for
the preservation of life across all of these outcomes. However, as noted, we are
able to examine the impact of respondents’ image of God on two essential
elements of the consistent life ethic, namely, abortion and capital punishment.

A careful examination of attitudes toward these two issues in tandem is impor-
tant for three reasons. First, other scholars have seen abortion and the death
penalty as the core elements of a consistent life ethic (Perl and McClintock
2001), and our examination of the influence of God imagery on these issues aug-
ments prior inquiries. Second, both policies require an ongoing, explicit decision
by the state to approve the end of life. Third, these issues are policy matters on
which there is likely to be political inconsistency, with liberals and conservatives
holding pro-life and anti-life positions but in opposite directions (i.e., liberals
favoring abortion but opposing the death penalty and conservatives vice versa).
Holding a consistent life ethic thus requires individuals to move beyond political
ideology to favor the protection of life in both instances. We seek to determine if
a loving image of God is connected to a consistent life ethic.

THE CONSISTENT LIFE ETHIC: PRIOR RESEARCH
AND LACUNAE

A consistent life ethic has attracted some scholarly attention since it initially
entered the public lexicon (Kelly and Kudlac 2000; Jelen 1988; McNair and
Zunes 2008; Mulligan 2006; Perl and McClintock 2001). This concept was first

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GOD IMAGERY AND OPPOSITION TO ABORTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 309

publicly introduced through Cardinal Joseph Bernardinas Gannon Lecture at
Fordham University (Bernardin 1983), Since that time, others have expanded
on this perspective, with Cardinal William H. Keeler identifying “God’s creative
and sustaining love for every human being” as “the one sure source of human
dignity and freedom. [God’s] love for us is the fundamental reason why every
human life must be valued and defended” (U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
2005a). In the parlance of many Catholic leaders, this interpretive framework
operates as a “seamless garment” (Cleghorn 1986; Welch and Legge 1991).
Individuals with a consistent life ethic are therefore expected to oppose both the
death penalty and abortion because both acts use modern technology intention-
ally to end human life (Perl and McClintock 2001).

Polling data show that a substantial majority of Americans (65-70
percent) support capital punishment for convicted murderers (Unnever et al.
2008). Surveys also indicate that a majority of Americans (in 1998 about 59
percent) report that they oppose abortion for various reasons (Kelly and Kudlac
2000). A minority of Americans oppose both capital punishment and abortion,
which are two key elements of a consistent life ethic (Perl and McClintock
2001). The minority status of this viewpoint is understandable given the
liberal-conservative fissure in American politics (Perl and McClintock 2001;
Sawyer 1982). Moreover, abortion attitudes do not significantly predict support
for the death penalty (Granberg and Granberg 1980; Sawyer 1982; Tamney
et al. 1992). Nevertheless, minority viewpoints such as a consistent life ethic
provide an intriguing opportunity for social scientific investigation.
Understanding the social sources of these worldviews can reveal the circum-
stances under which deviation from dominant norms occurs and can highlight
the prospects for dissent to foment social change.

Early research on the consistent life ethic investigated whether opposition to
abortion and capital punishment could be traced to students’ conceptualizations
of life ownership, that is, views that life belongs to God, the state, or the self
(Ross and Kaplan 1993). Ross and Kaplan (1993) hypothesized that
God-oriented individuals (those who believe that only God has the right to give
and take life) should have a consistent life ethic that allows them to oppose both
abortion and the death penalty. Individuals classified as God-oriented were less
accepting of abortion than their individual-oriented peers, while those embracing
a state-oriented life conception scale were more supportive of capital punishment.
Unfortunately, Ross and Kaplan’s (1993) methodology did not permit them to
explore whether defining life as belonging to God predicted attitudes toward both
abortion and the death penalty after controlling for other factors.

More recent research has examined denominational support for a consist-
ent life ethic. Tamney et al. (1992) found higher levels of support for various
defense of life positions among Catholics, while Perl and McClintock (2001)
found agreement with a consistent life ethic to be most pervasive among
Catholics (11.6 percent), followed by conservative Protestants (8.2 percent)
and mainline Protestants (5.8 percent). Consistent with an ideological

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310 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

exposure explanation, the effect of abortion attitudes on support for the death
penalty was most pronounced among Catholics who attended religious services
often (Perl and McClintock 2001; see also Bjarnason and Welch 2004),
although significant effects were also observed for mainline Protestants. More
recently, Mulligan (2006) analyzed four surveys and found that individuals who
viewed Pope John Paul II favorably were significantly more likely to oppose
capital punishment and abortion.

Our goal is to move beyond a preoccupation with the denominational bases
of a consistent life ethic. Scholars have begun to recognize that public opinion
about social issues is shaped by God images (Bader and Froese 2005; Froese and
Bader 2007, 2008; Unnever et al. 2006; Welch and Leege 1991). Indeed, the
nature and quality of the believer-deity relationship is now recognized as a criti-
cal influence on a variety of social attitudes, including support for the death
penalty and abortion (Bader and Froese 2005; Froese and Bader 2008; Unnever
et al. 2006). For example, Unnever et al. (2006) have identified two interrelated
dimensions of believers* relationship with God to be considered when investi-
gating the influence of religious convictions on public opinion: (1) the intimacy
or proximity that characterizes the believer’s relationship with God (i.e., believer’s
sense of closeness or nearness to God), and (2) the experiential quality of the
believer-deity relationship (i.e., the experience of God’s love in the believer’s
life) (see also, Bader and Froese 2005). Together, these components form what
these researchers call a “close relationship with a loving God” construct.

Why might a close relationship with a loving God create a cognitively con-
sistent schema with respect to capital punishment and abortion? Turning first to
capital punishment, previous scholarship has confirmed that people who have a
close relationship with a loving God oppose the death penalty because they are
inclined to view God’s love as unconditional and characterized by mercy for
wayward persons (Unnever et al. 2006). In fact, the effects of an individual’s per-
ceived relationship with God rivals that of political orientation, long recognized
as one of the most formidable influences on death penalty views. Relatedly,
Froese and Bader (2008) analyzed the 1998 General Social Survey (GSS) and
found that individuals who perceive God to be authoritarian (God as king,
father, judge, and master) were more likely to support the death penalty.

Turning to abortion, research has revealed that Catholics and Conservative
Protestants are more opposed to abortion (Ellison et al. 2005; Granberg and
Granberg 1980; Legge 1983; Petersen 2001; Sullins 1999; Wilcox 1992), as are
those who attend worship services frequently (see e.g., Ellison et al. 2005; Gay
and Lynxwiler 1999; Harris and Mills 1985; Jelen and Wilcox 2003; Legge 1983;
Wilcox 1992). The influence of God images on abortion attitudes has received
less attention, but fruitful results have surfaced. Opposition to abortion among
Catholic laypersons is connected with images of God as “judge” and “savior” as
well as closeness to God (Welch and Leege 1988). Moreover, those who hold an
authoritarian and activist (involved) view of God are more likely to oppose abor-
tion (Bader and Froese 2005; see also Froese and Bader 2008).

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GOD IMAGERY AND OPPOSITION TO ABORTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 3 1 1

Our research extends prior inquiries by exploring the influence of God
images on two key elements of the consistent life ethic, namely, opposition to
both abortion and capital punishment. We hypothesize that individuals who
report having a close relationship with a loving God will exhibit a life-
affirming worldview in which God is seen as the only legitimate giver and
taker of life. While these attitudes are consistent with the official position of
the Catholic Church (see U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops 2005a, 2005b),
prior research on the influential nature of God imagery leads us to expect that
the overriding influence of a personal relationship with a loving God will
eclipse the effects of denominational affiliation and other religious factors.

METHODS

Research Strategy and Data
Using 2004 GSS data, we first examine whether Americans who have a

close relationship with a loving God are more likely to oppose the death
penalty. Second, we investigate whether opposition to abortion is significantly
associated with having a close relationship with a loving God. Third, we con-
struct a measure that identifies individuals who oppose both abortion and
capital punishment, that is, those who exhibit support for a consistent life
ethic (as defined here) and regress it on our close relationship with a loving
God construct. In all analyses, we control for other religious factors and covari-
ates commonly used in previous studies. Finally, we examine whether the
relationship between support for a consistent life ethic and having a close
relationship with a loving God varies across denominational affiliations.

The 2004 GSS is a full-probability sample of U.S. adults living in house-
holds conducted by kvperson interviews. These data offer expanded measures of
religiosity (e.g., God imagery) and are generalizable to the non- institutionalized
adult American population, thus eclipsing single-state or single-denomination
studies (e.g., Applegate et al. 2000; Perl and McClintock 2001; Welch and
Leege 1988, 1991). The 2004 GSS is also larger and more diverse (racially
and economically) than other studies (e.g., Applegate et al. 2000; Sandys and
McGarrell 1997; Vogel and Vogel 2003). The GSS included the death penalty
question on three ballots, while the abortion attitude measures we use were
included on two ballots. Consequently, the sample includes respondents who
answered both questions.1 The total number of cases available for analyses prior
to listwise deletion of the missing cases was 808. Our study sample is 667.

*Data limitations prohibited us from investigating a more expansive definition of a con-
sistent life ethic (Bernadin 1983; McNair and Zunes 2008). Opposition to euthanasia,
asked of only one quarter of the GSS respondents, in combination with abortion and the
death penalty measures, reduces our sample size so significantly that meaningful analyses
could not be conducted.

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312 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

Dependent Variables
Oppose death penalty Respondents were asked whether they favor or oppose

the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. The response categories
included “favor,” “oppose,” and “don’t know.” A dichotomous measure, Oppose
Death Penalty (1 = oppose 0 = other), was constructed. In the 2004 GSS, 32
percent of the respondents reported that they opposed the use of the death
penalty for persons convicted of murder.

Oppose abortion Following previous research (e.g., Bader and Froese 2005),
we constructed a scale (Oppose Abortion) that sums across the extent to which
abortion is wrong under different circumstances. Respondents were prompted
with the query: “Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible
for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion.” The six questions are: (1) “If
there is a strong chance of serious defect in the baby?”; (2) “If she is married
and does not want any more children?”; (3) “If the family has a very low
income and cannot afford any more children?”; (4) “If she became pregnant as
a result of rape?”; (5) “If she is not married and does not want to marry the
man?”; and (6) “The woman wants it for any reason.” The response categories
were: “yes,” “no,” and “don’t know.” We coded individuals who opposed abor-
tion across all six circumstances as 1. Those who supported abortion under one
or more circumstances and those who responded “don’t know” were coded
0. To assess the validity of this scale, we generated a principal component
factor analysis on a tetrachoric correlation matrix of these six binary items.
This principal component analysis generated one factor, with factor loadings
ranging from 0.87 to 0.97.3

Consistent life ethic We constructed a measure of whether respondents had
a consistent life ethic (as defined in our study) by identifying those who
opposed both the death penalty and abortion across all six conditions (coded
1, all others coded 0).

Key Independent Variable: Close Relationship with a Loving Qod
We replicated the close loving God index constructed by Unnever et al.

(2006) by summing across responses to seven 2004 GSS items. Two items
measure the degree to which respondents experienced God as a loving

2There were 68 “don’t know” responses on the death penalty question (CAPPUN). All
were included in the “other” category. A consistent life ethic would lead to death penalty
opposition.

Individuals who answered “don’t know” on the abortion questions were also included
in the “other” category, because individuals who endorse a consistent life ethic would
affirm their opposition to abortion. “Don’t know” responses ranged from 3.9 percent on
ABANY (abortion on demand) to 2.2 percent on ABSINGLE (is single and does not want
to marry the man). We also constructed a depth of opposition measure using abortion
items by summing across the six questions related to the conditions under which abortions
are commonly sought (a = 0.80). We regressed this index on our image of God measure
while controlling for the other independent variables and it significantly predicted opposi-
tion to abortion (ß = 0.177, p = .01).

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GOD IMAGERY AND OPPOSITION TO ABORTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 313

deity: (1) “I feel God’s love for me, through others” and (2) “I feel God’s love
for me, directly.” Five items assessed closeness to God: (1) “I feel guided by
God in the midst of daily activities”; (2) “In general, how close do you feel to
God?”; (3) “I feel God’s presence”; (4) “I ask for God’s help in the midst of
daily activities”; and (5) “During worship, or at other times when connecting
with God, I feel joy which lifts me out of my daily concerns.” The standardized
alpha coefficient for the Close Loving God index was 0.94.

Given previous scholarship on the complexity of God imagery (Froese and
Bader 2007, 2008), we assessed whether the items we used to construct our
Close Loving God index load on two separate dimensions: closeness to God,
and perceptions of God’s love. Our factor analysis of the seven items generated
a single factor (sub-index correlation = 0.89). Moreover, both sub-indices are
similarly correlated with opposition to abortion (closeness = 0.41, loving =
0.38) and capital punishment (closeness = 0.14, loving = 0.11). Our scale rep-
resents a valid construct.

Other Predictor Variable: Religion Measures and Covariates
We controlled for the effect of various religious variables and other

measures that have been found to be associated with support for either capital
punishment or abortion, including religious attendance (“How often do you
attend religious services?” coded as 0 = “never” to 7 = “several times a week”),
prayer (“About how often do you prayl” reverse-coded so that 1 = “less than
once a week” and 5 = “several times a day”), biblical literalism (“The Bible is
the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word” coded as
1, all others coded 0), denominational attachment (self-stated strength of affilia-
tion, with response categories reverse-coded, ranging from “no religion” to
“strong”), denominational affiliation (RELTRAD classifications (Steensland
et al. 2000) namely, Catholic, Black Protestant, Conservative Protestant, Jewish,
other religions, unaffiliated, and Mainline Protestant [last as reference category]),
and religious transformation ( 1 = any transformation [new and personal commit-
ment to religion, life-changing religious or spiritual experience, born-again
experience], 0 = no transformation at all) used by Smith (2005).

Given the potential links between altruism and closeness to a loving God,
we constructed a nine-item summed index, altruism (a = 0.758, all load on
single factor) gauging, for example, donations of food or money to the home-
less and offering a seat to a stranger in the past year. Higher values on altruism
indicate less altruistic attitudes. Given previous research on the influence of
political conservatism on public policy attitudes (e.g., Applegate et al. 2000) we
use a self- identifier to tap this measure (scale of 1-7, “extremely conservative”
as maximum value). Because prior research has traced how support for the
death penalty and opposition to abortion can be linked through the “just des-
serts” perspective (Cook 1998; Wiecko and Gau 2008), we control for punitive-
ness (“In general, do you think the courts in this area deal too harshly or not

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314 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

harshly enough with criminals?” 1 = “too harshly,” 2 = “about right,” and 3 =
“not harshly enough”).

Among other controls commonly related to support for punitive crime
control policies or abortion (see e.g., Ellison et al. 2005; Gay and Lynxwiler
1999; Jelen and Wilcox 2003; Unnever and Cullen 2005, 2006; Unnever et al.
2005), we included a measure of race, African American (1= African
American, 0 = other) and a variable, Southerner ( 1 = southerner, 0 = all
others) that assessed whether respondents resided in the South when they were
16 years old and were living in the South when the interview was conducted.
We also controlled for gender (male =1), age (measured in years), and family
income through a GSS summary scale ranging from 1 to 13 (minimum =
“under $1,000,” the maximum = “$110,000 or over”). We additionally control
for the respondent’s marital status (currently married = 1, others = 0).

Preliminary analyses showed that the relationship between support for the
death penalty and education was not linear, revealing it to be a step function.
Thus, people with post-high school education were significantly more likely to
oppose capital punishment and no discernible effects were found among those
with less than a post-high school educational experience. We therefore
measured the respondent’s level of education by creating a binary variable,
college, (1 = post-high school education, 0 = other). Lastly, we control for fear
of crime, that is, whether respondents reported being “afraid to walk alone at
night” (1 = yes, 0 = no).

Analytical Strategy
We used binary logistic regression to analyze our dependent variables.

Listwise deletion of missing data was used for all variables excluding income;
missing data on income were replaced with its mean. The weighted sample was
used (WTSSALL). In Table 1, we present standardized logistic regression coef-
ficients and their corresponding odds ratios.

RESULTS

We begin our analysis by reviewing basic descriptive statistics. A frequency
analysis shows that 31 percent of Americans in 2004 opposed the death
penalty and 16 percent disapproved of abortion under all six conditions. Apart
from responses of “don’t know,” there are four salient positions that people can
take in relation to capital punishment and abortion. The data show that 7.58
percent of Americans have a consistent life ethic, opposing both abortion
under all circumstances and the death penalty. One quarter (25.06 percent) of
Americans oppose capital punishment but support abortion under at least one
condition. Fifty-eight (58.19) percent of Americans support both the death
penalty and abortion under at least one condition. And 9.17 percent support
capital punishment but oppose abortion under all six conditions.

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GOD IMAGERY AND OPPOSITION TO ABORTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 315

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GOD IMAGERY AND OPPOSITION TO ABORTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 317

Model 1 of Table 1 presents the effects of a close relationship with a loving
God on opposition to the death penalty net of controls. People who have a
close relationship with a loving God are significantly more likely to oppose
capital punishment. A unit change in the Close Loving God index increases
the predicted odds of opposing capital punishment by 0.068. Frequent worship
service attendance and no denominational affiliation also predict opposition to
the death penalty. Consistent with prior research, African Americans are sig-
nificantly (i.e., 3.6 times) more likely to oppose the death penalty. By contrast,
less altruistic individuals, political conservatives, more punitive persons, and
males are significantly more supportive of the death penalty.

Model 2 of Table 1 presents the results from regressing opposition to abor^
tion on the Close Loving God index and our other variables. Respondents who
have a close relationship with a loving God are significantly more likely to
oppose abortion. A unit change in the Close Loving God index increases the
predicted odds of consistent opposition to abortion by 0.112. Model 2 indicates
that those who attend religious services often, biblical literalists, conservative
Protestants, and political conservatives are more likely to oppose abortion
while Southerners, those with higher incomes, and older Americans are less
likely to do so.

Model 3 of Table 1 reports the results of regressing our measure of a con-
sistent life ethic (that is, opposition to both the death penalty and abortion
under all circumstances) on the Close Loving God index while controlling for
the other variables. As demonstrated in Model 3, Americans with a close
relationship with a loving God are significantly more likely to embrace a con-
sistent life ethic. A unit change in the Close Loving God index increases the
predicted odds of endorsing a consistent life ethic by 0.104-4 The results
additionally show that people who attend worship services often and Catholics
are significantly more likely to do so and Southerners and people with higher
incomes are less likely to oppose both capital punishment and abortion. It is
noteworthy that none of the other denominational affiliations predicted a con-
sistent life ethic.

The Close Loving God index is negatively and significantly related to each of the
“yes” abortion measures included in the 2004 GSS (i.e., support for abortion): “If the
family has a very low income and cannot afford any more children?” ( – 0.31, p = .000); “If
she became pregnant as a result of rape?” ( – 0.37, p – .000); “If she is married and does not
want any more children?” ( – 0.33, p = .000); “If there is a strong chance of serious defect
in the baby?” ( – 0.30, p = .000); “If the woman’s own health is seriously endangered by the
pregnancy?” ( – 0.26, p = .000); “If she is not married and does not want to marry the
man?” ( – 0.35, p = .000). A factor analysis of these six items produced two factors with
only the “If the woman’s own health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy” substan-
tively loading on the second factor (0.61). Consequently, we deleted this item from our
Oppose Abortion index. In analyses not reported here, we included the woman’s health con-
dition in our Oppose Abortion index and the results are substantively the same as reported
in Model 2 of Table 1 . We also included the women’s health measure in the consistent life
ethic variable, and, the results remained largely the same as those in Model 3 of Table 1.

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318 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

Given the denominational bases of a consistent life ethic that surface in

previous research, we next examine whether the linkages between a close
relationship with a loving God and a consistent life ethic vary by denomina-
tional affiliation. We constructed six interaction terms (one for each denomi-
national family) and simultaneously entered them into the logistic regression
equation presented in Model 4 of Table L We do so to determine if the effects
of Close Loving God vary across denominational affiliations. None of the inter-
action terms was significant. These results indicate that the relationship
between having a close relationship with a loving God and expressing a con-
sistent life ethic does not vary by denominational affiliation.

DISCUSSION

Our study offers a partial test of the religious antecedents of a consistent
life ethic, defined here (due to data limitations) as the factors underlying oppo-
sition to both the death penalty and abortion. While there is some evidence
that Catholics are most likely to oppose both capital punishment and abortion,
our study extends previous investigations by examining the influence of God
imagery on this disposition (Perl and McClintock 2001). Our study clearly
indicates that simultaneous opposition to abortion and the death penalty can
be traced to individuals reporting a close relationship with a loving God,
which is a cognitive schema that creates a generalized opposition to the inten-
tional termination of life (at least where abortion and capital punishment are
concerned). It would seem that individuals with this cognitive schema have a
life-affirming moral belief system, one in which God is viewed as the creator of
life and as the only legitimate entity for determining when life should end. It
is also worth noting that, apart from age, religious factors – and especially God
imagery – exhibit a persistent influence on opposition to abortion and the
death penalty.

Of course, our correlational study cannot address causal questions. Thus,
there is the need for future longitudinal research to assess the causal ordering
between the development of God images, other religious factors, and public
policy preferences. Some research reveals that God images develop from early
socialization experiences and may provide a springboard for later religious
experiences (De Roos et al. 2001). We have largely accepted these assump-
tions, but life-course data are needed to scrutinize them empirically. If these
assumptions are correct, then God images could be considered a foundational
facet of religious socialization and identity formation, with an overriding influ-
ence on sentiments toward public policy.

A number of other fruitful avenues for investigation should also be con-
sidered. First, given data limitations, we were not able to analyze other impor-
tant facets of a consistent life ethic (e.g., opposition to stem cell research or
euthanasia) in tandem with attitudes toward abortion and capital punishment.

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GOD IMAGERY AND OPPOSITION TO ABORTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 319

Such research is desperately needed to identify with more authority the scope
and sources of a consistent life ethic. Second, research is needed to determine
the various pathways through which a consistent life ethic may be cultivated.
Catholics are the best example of what we suspect is a formal institutional
transmission of a consistent life ethic (see Welch and Legge 1991). Yet, as we
have seen in this study and prior research, Catholics account for only a portion
of those who embrace a consistent life ethic. Another possible pathway for the
cultivation of a consistent life ethic may involve the development of a close
relationship with a loving God from early socialization experiences with
parents, teachers, and significant others who advocate that individuals develop
a close relationship with a God of love and mercy. Nevertheless, there may be
a combination of formal (institutional) and informal religious influences that
generate support for a consistent life ethic.

In addition, future scholarship is needed to explore the complex, multidi-
mensional character of God images. Previous research has determined that
judgmental images of God are linked with opposition to abortion (Bader and
Froese 2005; Froese and Bader 2008), even as our study found that closeness to
a loving God is also connected with opposition to abortion and support for a
consistent life ethic. This panoply of findings suggests that that the prevailing
schemes for analyzing God images (degree of distance from God and level of
judgment by God) may need to be expanded beyond a two-dimensional frame-
work. Religious believers may simultaneously affirm God’s judgment of human
behavior (divine mandates for moral rectitude) and God’s love for “His chil-
dren” (divine affection for all persons). Value orientations such as love and
judgment may at first blush seem to be contradictory, but could in fact be
“lived out” in ways that make them complementary in human relationships
and between deity and believers.

We end, then, with a call for additional research on the social sources,
contours, and outcomes associated with what seems to be a significant and
transposable religious schema – that is, the nature and quality of one’s relation-
ship with deity. Until such research can be conducted, there is mounting evi-
dence of the salient influence that a close relationship with a loving God
exerts on Americans’ political views, even when issues cut across the conven-
tional liberal-conservative political divide.

5At the prompting of a reviewer, we explored the influence of close loving God
imagery on the 2004 GSS euthanasia measure (“When a person has a disease that cannot
be cured, do you think doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient’s life by some
painless means if the patient and his family request it?”, with coding as follows: support = 1
do not support = 0). Americans who reported that they have a close relationship with a
loving God were significantly less likely to support euthanasia ( – 0.30, p = .000 ‘, n = 394),
and this finding persisted in regression analyses featuring all covariates in Table 1
(ß = 0.23, p = .05, n = 359), revealing consistent life-affirming stances toward the death
penalty, abortion, and euthanasia.

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320 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

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• Contents

p. 307
p. 308
p. 309
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• Issue Table of Contents

Sociology of Religion, Vol. 71, No. 3 (FALL 2010) pp. 257-388
Front Matter
Space for God: Lived Religion at Work, Home, and Play [pp. 257-279]
America as a “Christian Nation”? Understanding Religious Boundaries of National Identity in the United States [pp. 280-306]
God Imagery and Opposition to Abortion and Capital Punishment: A Partial Test of Religious Support for the Consistent Life Ethic [pp. 307-322]
Religious Giving and the Boundedness of Rationality [pp. 323-348]
The Secular Transition: The Worldwide Growth of Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists [pp. 349-373]
BOOK REVIEWS
Review: untitled [pp. 374-375]
Review: untitled [pp. 375-376]
Review: untitled [pp. 376-378]
Review: untitled [pp. 378-379]
Review: untitled [pp. 379-381]
Review: untitled [pp. 381-382]
Review: untitled [pp. 382-384]
Review: untitled [pp. 384-385]
ASR News &Announcements [pp. 386-388]
Back Matter