Author: Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: September 11, 2011
Introduction: Terrorists kill, but they also
extract huge indirect economic costs. Think, for example, of the macroeconomic
costs of long security checks at airports
Some families produce sportsmen. Others produce
terrorists.
Conventional wisdom holds that the typical terrorist comes from a poor family
and is himself poorly educated. This seems sensible. Children who are born
into low-income, low-education families are far more likely than average to
become criminals, so wouldn't the same be true for terrorists?
To find out, the economist Alan Krueger combed through a Hezbollah newsletter
called Al-Ahd (The Oath) and compiled biographical details on 129 dead "shahids,"
or martyrs. He then compared them with men from the same age bracket in the
general populace of Lebanon. The terrorists, he found, were less likely to
come from a poor family (28% versus 33%) and more likely to have at least
a high school education (47% versus 38%).
In general, Krueger found, "terrorists tend to be drawn from well-educated,
middle-class or high-income families". And despite a few exceptions,
this trend holds true around the world, from Latin American terrorist groups
to the al-Qaida members who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Why Osama Ain't Fidel
It may be that when you're hungry, you've got better things to worry about
than blowing yourself up. It may be that terrorist leaders place a high value
on competence, since a terrorist attack requires more orchestration than a
typical crime.
Furthermore, as Krueger points out, crime is primarily driven by personal
gain, whereas terrorism is a political act. In his analysis, the kind of person
most likely to become a terrorist is similar to the kind of person most likely
to...vote.
Anyone who has read some history will recognise that Krueger's terrorist profile
sounds quite a bit like the typical revolutionary. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara,
Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin - you won't find a single lower-class, uneducated
lad among them.
But a revolutionary and a terrorist have different goals. Revolutionaries
want to overthrow governments. Terrorists want to - well, it isn't always
clear. As one sociologist puts it, they might wish to remake the world in
their own dystopian image; religious terrorists may want to cripple secular
institutions. Krueger cites 100-plus scholarly definitions of terrorism.
What makes terrorism particularly maddening is that killing isn't even the
main point. Rather, it is a means by which to scare the pants off the living.
Terrorism is therefore devilishly efficient, exerting far more leverage than
an equal amount of non-terrorist violence.
In October 2002, the Washington, DC, metropolitan area experienced 50 murders,
a fairly typical number. But 10 of these murders were different. Rather than
the typical domestic disputes or gang killings, these were random and inexplicable
shootings. Ordinary people were shot while pumping gas or mowing the lawn.
After the first few killings, panic set in. As they continued, the region
was virtually paralysed.
Fail, Therefore, Succeed
Just two people: a 41-year-old man and his
teenage accomplice, firing a Bushmaster .223-calibre rifle from an old Chevrolet
sedan. So simple, so cheap and so effective: that's the leverage of terror.
Imagine that the 19 hijackers from 9/11, rather than going to the trouble
of flying airplanes into buildings, had instead spread themselves around the
US and started shooting random people every day. The entire country would
have been brought to its knees.
Terrorism is effective because it imposes costs on everyone, not just its
direct victims. The most substantial of these indirect costs is fear of a
future attack, even though such fear is misplaced: The probability that an
American will die in a year from a terrorist attack is roughly 1 in 5 million.
But consider the less obvious costs, too, like the loss of time and liberty.
Think about the last time you went through an airport security line and were
forced to remove your shoes, shuffle through the metal detector and then hobble
about while gathering up your belongings.
The beauty of terrorism - if you're a terrorist - is that you can succeed
by failing. We perform this shoe routine thanks to a Briton named Richard
Reid, who, even though he couldn't ignite his shoe bomb, exacted a huge price.
Let's say it takes an average of one minute to remove and replace your shoes
in the airport security line. In the US alone, this procedure happens roughly
560 million times per year. Five hundred and sixty million minutes equals
more than 1,065 years - which, divided by 77.8 years (the average US life
expectancy at birth), yields a total of nearly 14 person-lives. So even though
Reid failed to kill a single person, he levied a tax that is the time equivalent
of 14 lives per year.
The direct costs of the 9/11 attacks were massive - nearly 3,000 lives and
$300 billion - as were the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But
consider the collateral costs as well. In just the three months following
the attacks, there were 1,000 extra traffic deaths in the US. Why?
Less Police for Ordinary Crooks
One contributing factor is that people stopped flying and drove instead. Per
mile, driving is much more dangerous than flying. Interestingly, however,
the data show that most of these extra traffic deaths occurred not on interstates
but on local roads, and they were concentrated in the Northeast, close to
the terrorist attacks. Furthermore, these fatalities were more likely than
usual to involve drunken and reckless driving. These facts, along with myriad
psychological studies of terrorism's aftereffects, suggest that the 9/11 attacks
led to a spike in alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress that translated
into, among other things, extra driving deaths.
Such trickle-down effects are nearly endless. Thousands of foreign-born university
students and professors were kept out of the US because of new visa restrictions
after the 9/11 attacks. In New York City, so many police resources were shifted
to terrorism that other areas, such as anti-Mafia units, were neglected. A
similar pattern was repeated on the national level. Money and manpower that
otherwise would have been spent chasing financial scoundrels were instead
diverted to chasing terrorists - perhaps contributing to, or at least exacerbating,
the recent financial meltdown.
Not all of the 9/11 after-effects were harmful. Thanks to decreased airline
traffic, influenza was slower to spread. In Washington, DC, crime fell whenever
the federal terror-alert level went up (thanks to extra police flooding the
city). And an increase in border security was a boon to some California farmers
- who, as Mexican and Canadian imports declined, grew and sold so much marijuana
that it became one of the state's most valuable crops.
