After a spiral of violence in the ’80s, the United States’ violent crime rate is at its lowest point in 30 years. Theories range from better day care to a stronger economy. But documented research bolsters the common-sense claim that increased incarceration rates and abortions have resulted in the drop in crime.

Incarceration rates doubled between 1987 and 1997, with an estimated 1.7 million people currently in jail or prison. The crime rate over that period increased until the early ’90s, when it leveled off and then began its downward march in 1994 (FBI). Every year since has seen a significant decrease in violent crime.

While some may find it difficult to take those numbers at face value, it is a plausible conclusion that incarcerating criminals and keeping them off the streets leads to less crime.

Even if some studies show mandatory sentencing is not an effective deterrent, it cannot be ignored that every criminal in jail is one less on the streets. But that also means the only way to keep the crime rate low is to either keep them locked up or summarily execute them.

Life in prison is the same as capital punishment in regards to the outside crime rate, but only one solution frees up prison space. Weighing the financial costs of the two options, one finds that the cost of 25 years of incarceration adds up to a million dollars, which is equal to what an execution costs after all legal fees are considered. Would you rather pay for a convicted murderer to have health and dental plans or see your money put to good use?

Moving past that, we come to the nasty topic of abortion. While still a moral debate for most people, statistical evidence shows that choice is a beneficial social-engineering tool.

Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and John Donohue III, a Stanford University law professor, conducted an analysis that suggests legalized abortion may account for as much as half of the overall crime drop in the United States between 1991 and 1997.

According to their research, many women whose children would have been most likely to commit crimes as young adults chose instead to abort their pregnancies. Because of that, a disproportionate number of would-be criminals in the 1990s were not born in the 1970s.

FBI data shows most criminals reach peak activity in their early 20s. Basic arithmetic shows that after the legalization of abortion in 1973, all things being equal, there should have been a decrease in crime in 1994. FBI statistics vindicate that assumption.

Before the moral majority cries foul, consider some specific evidence the researchers accumulated. Five states — Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York and Washington — that legalized abortion between 1969 and 1970 saw a reduction in crime of 40.8 percent between 1982 and 1997. For the nation as a whole, it fell 24.6 percent. Violent crime dropped 12.8 percent in those states but rose 17.6 percent elsewhere. And property crime in the five states dropped 44.1 percent compared with 8.8 percent in the rest of the United States.

Consider the demographic and geographic differences between those five states. There is no common thread among them except for legalized abortion. They all saw a reduction in crime after legalizing abortion, and they saw it earlier than the rest of us.

Levitt and Donohue also found that the 10 states with the highest abortion rates from 1973 to 1976 had lower crime rates than the rest of the United States. Plus, the 10 states with the lowest abortion rates in that period had a higher average crime rate than the other states.

In their conclusion, the authors wrote that unwanted children are most likely to commit crimes as adults, and those most likely to give birth to unwanted children are teenagers, minorities and the poor. Those are also the people most likely to choose abortion.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in August, Levitt said, “I think we’ve amassed enough evidence to make people take the issue seriously.”

Their analysis was controlled for other factors such as police, prison populations, poverty and unemployment. Based on that, it is highly unlikely that abortion and its effect on crime is just a statistical coincidence, and that means there are other social implications besides crime.

Fewer unemployable people means higher employment rates for the rest of us.

Maybe our good economic fortune is because we don’t have an additional 34 million people competing for jobs, huh?

Because there are fewer unemployed people, there should be a lower reliance on welfare. Surprisingly enough, welfare caseloads fell by 2.7 million people between 1993 and 1999, a drop of 46 percent for the nation as a whole (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services).

The truth is that when looking for explanations, we should open our eyes and explore all possible reasons. It is not wrong if the answers we find are unpalatable to some, but to ignore their implications would be a mistake.

Mandatory incarceration and unfettered access to abortion have given us our lowest crime rate in decades, and that fact should not go unnoticed. While the long-term social benefits of abortion have yet to be fully researched, to disregard logic and pretend that none exists is foolish.

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Aaron Woell is a senior in political science from Bolingbrook, Ill. If you don’t want it, don’t have it.