The Observer, April 14, 2006
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 24
Freakonomics informs and entertains outside classroom
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I will be the first to admit that I don't really understand economics – I once described my lack of a balanced check book to my frustrated mother as "intuitive banking." And I hate statistics. I was intrigued, however, when I spotted Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's Freakonomics (William Morrow, 2005) in which, the subtitle promises, "a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything."
Freakonomics is an extension of a 2003 article by Dubner in The New York Times Magazine about Levitt, an award-winning economist at the University of Chicago known for his eccentric interests and innovative approach to research. His subjects of choice skew toward "cheating, corruption, and crime." Levitt will likely never be asked to head the Federal Reserve, and that's a good thing for readers. This is not a book about interest rates, the stock market, or trade deficits, but rather about crack dealers, sumo wrestlers, and parents.
"Everything" may be a stretch, given the roughly 200 pages of text, but the six chapters do an impressive job of spanning the mundane and the exotic without feeling completely disconnected. Levitt has a knack for connecting seemingly disparate phenomena – he uncovers patterns of cheating by public school teachers and sumo wrestlers and compares the information control tactics of the Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents. In perhaps his most controversial argument, he links the de-criminalization of abortion twenty years earlier with the crime drop of the 1990s.
One of the most interesting chapters is also the most amusingly titled. "Drug Dealers Living with Their Moms" gives a fascinatingly detailed description of the economics of crack gangs. Drawing heavily on field data obtained by graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh during six years living with the Chicago Black Disciples gang, Levitt teases out a picture of a drug hierarchy that mirrors that of corporate America.
The average corner crack dealer, it turns out, lives with his mom because he makes about $3.30 per hour, with the vast majority of profits going to the top 2.2 percent of the gang. Crack dealers, along with the rank and file of gangs who pay dues in hopes of someday dealing, work at sub-par wages in the faint hope that someday they will become part of the elite that takes home six-figure salaries. Sound familiar?
The final two chapters offer a provocative look at parenting practices, but feel slightly out of sync, almost as if they belong in another book. While "What Makes a Perfect Parent?" reaches surprising conclusions about what factors do and do not affect children's success, it doesn't have the offbeat appeal of the rest of the book. "A Roshanda by Any Other Name" is more successful precisely because it takes seemingly meaningless data – trends in naming practices – and finds patterns with real-life implications. Haven't you always wanted to know how many years of maternal education are associated with your name?
Overall, Freakonomics is a strong piece of popular non-fiction. The style is engaging, if occasionally a bit chatty, and while Levitt provides the subject matter, data, and conclusions and gets first billing, it is fairly obvious that the bulk of the writing is Dubner's.
The contrast becomes most jarring in the introductions to each chapter, which are excerpted from Dubner's original article. Their content does not contribute meaningfully to what follows. It would have been sufficient to acknowledge the genesis of the book in The New York Times Magazine and added more biographical information on Levitt to the preface.
Freakonomics makes generous use of statistical data, but in a highly accessible manner. Fairly thorough notes appear in the back, but are not marked in the text, which makes it difficult to work back and forth between the two. The book is readable without the notes, but they are worth at least flipping through and contain some humorous asides.
Most importantly, Levitt and Dubner avoid making too many conclusions or recommendations about the data. While editorializing would have been easy at several points – on the educational policies that drive teachers to fudge test scores, or the morals of abortion – Freakonomics sticks mainly to the facts, respecting the line between description and prescription.
Edutainment is often a risky genre, but Freakonomics pulls it off admirably. It's easily readable in one or two sittings, and promises an amusing alternative to schoolwork (or checkbook balancing). And it's certainly more fun than taking economics.
