Teen Murders Up? Nah.

Freakonomics author Steven Levitt disputes the new report making headlines by James Alan Fox that homicide rates of black teens are up.  Turns out that Fox failed to adust for the increase in the number of blacks ages 15 to 19, which rose 15 percent between 2000 and 2007.

So even if any individual black teen’s propensity for crime was unchanged over this time period, the aggregate amount of black-teen crime would have risen by 15 percent.

Those of us who care about the fate of cities (and therefore the fate of our climate, our ability to innovate, our productivity, etc.) should be especially vigilant in parsing these headlines.  These stories become part of the urban mythology and quickly are treated as "truth" about why cities are dangerous and otherwise unfit places to live.

  

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