Catherine Pakaluk, director and assistant professor, social research, published commentary of First Things and quoted in Catholic News Agency, examines a study “Car Seats As Contraception” and how car seat laws affect birth rates.
..."Taken at face value, these findings are a classic economics story about the unintended consequences of government mandates, like the iconic 1975 paper by Sam Peltzman that asked whether seat belt laws had made people more safe, by restraining them in accidents, or less safe, by reducing the cost of reckless driving leading to more recklessness. (He concluded it was the latter.) There is a related phenomenon at work here, too, that reminds us of Bastiat’s broken window fable. The unintended negative consequences—prevented births—are unseen, whereas a single child fatality is hard to un-see."...
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