Thanks to Brad DeLong for posting the following:
Felix Salmon
How Unleaded Gasoline Slashed the Violent Crime Rate
The paper, from the NBER, is 70 pages long, but the conclusion, from Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, is simple, and stunning:
The main result of the paper is that changes in childhood lead exposure are responsible for a 56% drop in violent crime in the 1990s.
What are those "changes in childhood lead exposure"? Primarily the move to unleaded gasoline, which happened in the US between 1975 and 1985.
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