Identifying the differences between proximate and root causes is pivotal to decision-making success. Identifying the root cause or the true course of events is often the difference between successful and non-successful outcomes.
Example – Proximate vs. Root
A proximate cause is a causal link with the most immediate responsibility for an outcome.
The root cause, also called the ultimate cause, is the real reason.
Why did the car break down?
Proximate cause – Because it ran out of gas.
Root cause – Because the driver failed to gas up the tank.
Crime Boom of the 1970s
The 1970s seemed to be teeming with serial killers such as John Wayne Gacy, Dennis Rader (BTK), Son of Sam, and Ted Bundy, to name a few.
The 70s had over 119 active serial killers and 37,990 recorded rapes nationwide. Add to that the 13,000 felonies on NYC subways in 1979 alone. Something was definitely up.
A decade earlier, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued a rallying cry for a “War on Crime.” Culminating in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.
One of the key focuses of the act was increasing the minimum age for buying handguns to 21.
While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it was like they were saying that the solution to dealing with the increasing amount of crime was to remove the weapon that ’caused’ most murders.
That logic might seem sound. However, it focuses on the proximate cause of death and not the root cause.
It ultimately did little to stop the crime boom of the 1970s.
The Tipping Point
The fact is that the 1970s didn’t just appear out of nowhere… The government had identified a problem a decade earlier. They just failed at identifying the root cause.
Tipping points often occur before we see them happen, and the fact was that even in the 60s, the board had been set nearly two decades prior.
The first of the baby boomer generation was born in 1946. This earliest group entered their crime years in 1961, and the baby boomers born in 1954 entered their crime years in 1969. The crime boom mirrored the baby boom. It wasn’t simply that the baby boomers were worse, but there were also more of them.
Moving forward from the 70s a couple of decades to the early 1990s, Mayor Giuliani, elected in 1994, has been credited with the decline of crime in New York City. Attributed to an increase in policing.
Giuliani’s increased policing was based on the Broken Windows Theory. A theory that declares war on visible crime in order to discourage other crimes from taking place.
If this sounds like an over-simplification, it’s because it is. There was no proof that graffiti and vandalism had caused the crime boom of the previous decades.
Even in the 90s, the ultimate cause hadn’t been identified by the government. Luckily though, just as with the crime boom, the board had been set nearly two decades prior.
Abortion wasn’t legalized in the United States until 1973… Effectively preventing births of those who previously would have been raised in bad situations that we know today to create criminals.
Those born in 1973 would have entered their prime crime age in 1988. Right around the time, that crime figures started to drop nationally. This is well-documented and is known as the Donohue–Levitt Hypothesis.
The reality was that crime in New York City had started to drop most rapidly in 1991, 3 years prior to the celebrated Giuliani’s election to office.
Sadly, to this day, many people still don’t believe abortion and crime rates are causally linked despite mountains of evidence.
Running With Blinders On
Poor perspective is a trait so very real to us as human beings.
It is easy to focus on proximate causes, such as the economy’s poor performance being used as a reason for the crime spike of the 1970s. Or gun sales causing the increasing crime in the 60s.
The reality is that we struggle to see the truth when it comes to a chain of events.
Whether it’s saving a business or helping shape effective policy and reforms, sometimes we need to look back a long way to gain the perspective we need.
When we don’t do this, we’re essentially running our lives and the lives of others with blinders on.
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References:
– https://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/
– https://time.com/3746059/war-on-crime-history/
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