SuperFreakonomics – Steven D Levitt (2009)

SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, published in 2009, is the follow-up to their best-selling book Freakonomics. This sequel continues to explore hidden economic patterns behind seemingly unrelated aspects of daily life using unconventional questions and data-driven insights. Through vivid storytelling, the authors delve into topics as varied as prostitution, global warming, altruism, and medical hand hygiene, all underpinned by the premise that people respond to incentives – just not always in ways we expect.

Plot Summary

The world moves in peculiar rhythms, and often it is not the expected answers that shape society, but the strange and hidden forces pulsing beneath the surface. In a bustling city corner or the sterile corridors of a hospital, human behavior dances to the tune of incentives – sometimes noble, sometimes bizarre, always revealing.

On a street in Chicago, LaSheena leans against an SUV, her eyes weary but her words matter-of-fact. She earns her living from a mix of haircuts, shoplifting, lookout duties for a gang, and prostitution. Among these, selling her body pays best, though she admits she dislikes men. Her honesty is chillingly practical – if it paid more, she would do it more. Across the city, economists and sociologists peer into the underworld of prostitution with clipboards and statistics, uncovering that a street prostitute earns about $350 a week, less than her counterparts a century earlier. Back then, in Chicago’s opulent Everleigh Club, women known as butterfly girls earned the modern equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. The profession once glittered with financial promise, now dulled by societal shifts and competitive free alternatives like casual sex.

As the researchers dig deeper, they find that the profession has suffered not only from legal crackdowns but also from shifting cultural mores. Men no longer need to pay for intimacy when it is often offered freely. This disruption mirrors any market threatened by innovation. Prostitution, unable to lobby like the steel or sugar industry, loses ground to romance without price tags. Even the act of oral sex, once a premium offering, has dropped in cost due to shifting taboos and preferences.

Elsewhere in the same city, hand hygiene becomes an unlikely battleground. A urologist in a hospital observes the silent threat of bacteria passed by the very hands trained to heal. Despite clear protocols, doctors and nurses wash their hands far less than they claim. Surveillance and soap consumption data expose a disturbing gap between declared behavior and actual behavior. But where rules fail, incentives succeed. Hospital staff compete in hand-washing races, and compliance climbs. One simple reward system – a dinner raffle for the most improved – outperforms months of lectures and reminders.

In a remote Indian village, the flicker of a television screen becomes a quiet revolution. Where dowries, domestic abuse, and missing daughters once reigned without challenge, the introduction of cable TV stirs the air with images of women dressed boldly, speaking freely, living lives untouched by submission. Economists notice patterns emerging like footprints in wet cement. Villages newly wired for satellite television show declines in domestic violence tolerance, greater autonomy for women, and a drop in birth rates. Families begin to keep their daughters in school. For all the failed government programs and ignored laws, a soap opera does what policy could not.

Patterns, once hidden, begin to emerge across different landscapes. A drunk man leaving a party, proud of his decision to walk instead of drive, finds himself in greater peril. On a per-mile basis, walking drunk proves more lethal than driving drunk, though the walker risks only his own life, unlike the driver who may take others with him. The numbers unsettle expectations. The real danger is not always where it seems to lie. Human judgment, often steered by emotion or custom, can lead astray in the absence of hard data.

Further down this winding road, a terrorist’s mind is mapped by economics. Incentives and strategic logic reveal that many suicide bombers, contrary to caricature, are well-educated and come from comfortable backgrounds. Martyrdom is not random madness, but sometimes a calculated pathway to fame, legacy, and rewards for the bomber’s family. In this cold analysis, emotion does not disappear – it is simply reframed. Incentives are not always monetary; they are moral, familial, reputational. Understanding the motivations allows for deeper intervention, more than walls or warnings ever could.

In the sterile calm of an emergency room, the same logic plays out. Doctors face an avalanche of decisions, and small misjudgments ripple outward. The standard checklist for hand-washing saves more lives than a new machine or medication. The lesson repeats: incentives matter, but so does simplification. Systems designed for human weakness tend to outperform systems designed for ideal behavior.

Not all data sets are spreadsheets and charts. Sometimes, they are the lives of street-level players, tracked over months, each transaction logged in worn notebooks. A gang’s financial structure mirrors that of a franchise corporation. A few at the top rake in profits while foot soldiers earn less than minimum wage. Yet they stay, lured by the promise of advancement or reputation. For them, the incentive is not immediate wealth, but the lottery of potential future glory.

Back on the South Side, Sudhir Venkatesh’s trackers log everything from the price of a sex act to the weather. Prices fluctuate with customer race, act type, and location. Condoms are used rarely. Violence is common. The data is grim but honest. It paints a market shaped not by dignity or safety, but by raw economics. A pimp’s presence, surprisingly, improves efficiency and income – his network brings in higher-paying clients, even after he takes his cut.

In another chapter, a group of rogue scientists brainstorm fixes for global warming, not by preaching restraint but by proposing cheap, large-scale geoengineering tricks. Ideas like pumping sulfur into the stratosphere, mimicking volcanic cooling, provoke outrage from environmental purists but cost less than a fraction of global carbon reduction campaigns. The sulfur plan could be implemented for the price of a Hollywood blockbuster. It might not be ideal, but it offers a practical fallback when utopian visions falter.

As the book draws its curtain, the message is not one of tidy conclusions, but of a reframed vision. Incentives, not ideologies, drive much of the world’s action. Human behavior, messy and imperfect, often resists judgment but yields to measurement. Whether through a prostitute’s pricing, a pedestrian’s peril, or a hand not washed, the hidden side of things becomes a lens to understand how the world actually works – not as we wish it to be, but as it is.

Main Characters

• Steven D. Levitt – As the economist behind the data, Levitt brings rigorous empirical analysis to real-world phenomena. His academic background allows him to interpret complex statistics and patterns that often challenge conventional wisdom. He appears in the book both directly and indirectly, often participating in fieldwork, as with his collaboration with sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh.

• Stephen J. Dubner – A journalist and co-author, Dubner’s voice infuses the book with wit and accessibility. He serves as a translator of Levitt’s economic insights, shaping them into narratives that engage and challenge the reader. Dubner’s curiosity and storytelling talent are central to the book’s engaging tone.

• Sudhir Venkatesh – A sociologist whose ethnographic work on underground economies (notably crack dealers and street prostitutes) is featured prominently. His field research provides a human lens to the economic data, capturing gritty, on-the-ground realities that Levitt and Dubner analyze.

• Allie – A high-end prostitute who contacts Levitt offering insights into the economics of her profession. Her story exemplifies how individual anecdotes can yield significant economic revelations when placed in a data-driven framework.

• Ada and Minna Everleigh – Historical figures referenced in the exploration of early 20th-century prostitution economics. They represent the upper tier of the profession and serve as a case study in wage structures and supply-demand dynamics within vice economies.

Theme

• Incentives Drive Behavior: Central to both this and the previous book, this theme underpins every story. The authors argue convincingly that people – from doctors and terrorists to schoolteachers and sex workers – respond predictably to the incentives around them. Whether financial, social, or moral, these motivators influence even the most surprising outcomes.

• Unintended Consequences: One of the book’s guiding principles is that well-meaning actions often produce unexpected results. For instance, television in rural India inadvertently reduces domestic abuse and shifts gender norms, while regulations against prostitution paradoxically raise its price and risk.

• Rationality in Irrational Spaces: The book frequently challenges the reader’s notions of logic by revealing rational patterns in seemingly irrational environments. Whether it’s the pricing of sex acts or the reasons people give to charity, the authors expose underlying consistency governed by economic principles.

• Hidden Data, Hidden Truths: A motif throughout is the idea that what’s visible isn’t always what’s most important. The authors emphasize the power of overlooked data – hospital soap usage rates, prostitute earnings, or even pedestrian death rates – to reveal truths that traditional narratives miss.

Writing Style and Tone

Levitt and Dubner write in a lucid, conversational style that demystifies complex economic concepts through storytelling. They favor a narrative-driven approach, structuring their arguments around engaging anecdotes and vivid case studies rather than abstract theorizing. The prose is lean, often playful, and thrives on counterintuitive conclusions that provoke and entertain. Humor is a frequent seasoning, used to both lighten the tone and highlight the absurdities in our societal assumptions.

The tone is iconoclastic, skeptical of conventional wisdom and unafraid to challenge sacred cows. The authors present themselves as curious explorers rather than definitive authorities, allowing them to pose questions with genuine openness. This tone also fosters a sense of intellectual adventure, inviting readers to think like economists by following the data, not ideology. Their commitment to empirical evidence is balanced by an awareness of its limits, and they often acknowledge the controversial nature of their findings with humility and wit.