So Unleaded gasoline is safer? I'm sorry I am kind of confused on this matter. I would think the rise in prices would influence more crime but not the product itself am I missing something?
What's interesting is that Lead abatement occurred at different rates in different states & countries, and the rise & reduction of crime independently tracked those rates on a specific locality basis. Then you have the plausible causality based on the known effects of lead poisoning on the cerebral development of children. The article does go into this:
The first thing that came to mind for me was that poor people live in smoggy inner city neighborhoods that are poorly maintained and probably have a lot more environmental hazards overall. The link between poverty and crime rates is pretty well documented at this point. The difference between inner city and rural crime rates is real but the population density is much lower also and the opportunity presented to commit crimes goes down with the thinning population and associated property.
Check this out. New Orleans Lead soil contamination levels by area: Same areas, this time shown by household income:
We'd need scaling and distances involved and a lot of other factors before we could do a good analysis of what effects this stuff had on crime rates. Pointing at lead concentrations as a determinative cause in higher crime rates just seems quixotic without being able to see all the other factors involved also. If you had wealthy areas with high crime rates by the occupants of those areas and also high lead levels, well then maybe you are on to something. I'm just very skeptical without seeing a much larger analysis of the demographics involved.
It isn't surprising because we've known for some time that lead isn't good for us. Of course, I think adding discipline into the home might also stop some of the problems that are occurring with crime.
Crime rates don't seem to be all that much effected by parental discipline. If they were then crime rates would have been much lower in say the 1800's when families were not split the way they are now and multiple generations tended to live in the same domicile. Poverty effects property crime rates. Put a lot of very poor people together and you'll wind up with high property crime rates. This is not a US phenomenon, it occurs in most societies around the world including some where the nuclear family is much more important than it is at the moment in the US.
