Why University of Illinois and City College tuition should be slashed. According to a summary of the new book Risky Behavior Among Youth by Jonathan Gruber (“Poverty Research News,” September-October), teenagers are not pathological risk takers who ignore economic incentives. “For example, teen smoking and marijuana use decisions are found to be sensitive to the prices of these substances; teen pregnancy risk falls as the incidence of AIDS rises (raising the risk of unprotected sex) and as welfare benefits fall (lowering the potential value of support for an out-of-wedlock child)….Finally, state college tuition policy is an important determinant in the decision to drop out of high school; when state tuition is low, individuals are more likely to complete high school, as the cost of continuing education is reduced.”
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Missile “defense”–it won’t work politically either. Writing in the journal International Security (Summer), University of Chicago political scientist Charles Glaser and Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland argue that a national missile defense “would increase U.S. security only if the United States could deploy an effective system without seriously damaging its relations with Russia and China.” Unless Russia and China can be mollified, missile defense will simply provoke them to beef up their missile attack systems, leading to an arms race and less security for the U.S. than before (a summary of the report is at www.harrisschool.uchicago.edu).
