49 pages • 1-hour read
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
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Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Why Should Suicide Bombers Buy Life Insurance?”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to suicide and suicide bombings.
Chapter 2 opens by discussing the lesser-known factors in predicting success in an individual’s life. Though Chapter 1 covered the advantage of the accident of gender, this chapter expands to show that small factors like a person’s birth month can also predict their later economic success. A person’s birth month affects whether they’ll be the oldest or youngest in their school year, with the oldest students being more likely to succeed. Names also predict success, since more attention is often given to students with names that come first in the alphabet. If talent is truly random—an idea that the authors tend to believe—then no factors should indicate who will grow to be successful at their chosen field. However, the authors determine that success can actually be predicted in a few key ways. For example, in the field of baseball, if a boy’s father played in the Major Leagues, that boy will be 800 times more likely to play in the Major Leagues than a randomly selected boy. Of course, baseball talent is not a matter of genetics alone; many other factors influence that success, including available resources, parental expertise and expectations, and the fact that name recognition leads to early notice in the Minor Leagues. Because baseball prowess can be so reliably predicted, the authors wonder if other professions could also be predicted from family situations, and they turned their attention to determining what kind of family produces a terrorist.
They found that the average terrorist, though often portrayed in the media as an impoverished, uneducated extremist, actually comes from a higher-income and educated family. Poorer people have to focus on subsistence, while terrorism requires the cultivation of ideals. Terrorists, therefore, need at least some leisure time and resources. Better educated terrorists also tend to be more successful, so terror organizations tend to recruit from that demographic.
Terrorism as a political and economic act is also less of a mindless, rabid act of fundamentalism and more of a way to achieve the greatest impact for the least cost and effort. The panic and devastation created by an act of terrorism far outstrips the effort required to achieve it. Not only that, but the fear of further attacks continues to propagate terror long past the actual act. However, the moral repugnance of harming innocents over political ideals dissuades the vast majority of people from engaging in terrorism.
Chapter 2 then turns to emergency rooms. Terrorist attacks will often send their victims to the ER, but they form only a small minority of ER visitors. ERs are plagued by many issues that are usually seen as a microcosm of the issues of the hospital to which they belong. Many emergency departments suffer from overcrowding, understaffing, lack of funds, and flawed communication between departments. These issues lead to bad patient outcomes that could have been avoided. Enter Craig Feied, a doctor who found the lack of information to be the most egregious problem at his hospital. He found that doctors had to spend way too much time looking up information and checking with other doctors, and as a result, they were forced to spend less time with their patients and sometimes missed important clues that would lead to a more accurate diagnosis. Dubbing the problem “datapenia,” Feied developed a system that he called Azyxxi, an information management system that solved those problems. Azyxxi was quick, easy to use, and allowed his department to drastically improve outcomes after implementation. The cost of developing the program was high, but after development, it was cheap to implement and use. Microsoft later bought the program and renamed it Amalga, implementing it in many ERs throughout the country.
The data that Amalga collects aids individual ERs and also describes patterns of ER function throughout the country. For instance, it showcases that medical technology improves at such a rapid rate that new technology is barely implemented before it is outpaced by a new invention; as a result, administrators have to decide whether to risk constantly disorienting and retraining staff or continuing to use obsolete equipment. The data from Amalga also shows that doctors who spend more time with their patients are more likely to have positive outcomes, and additionally that female ER doctors have better outcomes with their patients, though the reason for that is unclear. Although these factors influence outcomes slightly, most doctors in the ER have almost identical outcomes.
Finally, Levitt and Dubner explain the chapter’s title by showing factors that tend to distinguish terrorists from the rest of humanity. For example, the typical terrorist owns a cell phone and engages in higher education. Additionally, they tend to rent rather than own a home. From a more economic standpoint, terrorists tend not to have savings accounts; they only withdraw money at specific times, usually excluding Fridays, and they never buy life insurance. Levitt and Dubner therefore posit that if a terrorist wanted to throw authorities off-track, it would be smart to purchase life insurance. The authors also acknowledge that although it is possible to narrow down the field of potential terrorists to 99% accuracy, the failure rate of 1% still constitutes a huge number of people who might be falsely accused of terrorism.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Chapter 2 of SuperFreakonomics delves into deliberately provocative topics in order to examine The Hidden Incentives Behind Human Behavior. Whether analyzing the advantages that lead to success or the common attributes of terrorists, the authors strive to prove that human behavior is often shaped by subtle and unexpected factors. Their opening discussion of the predictors of success—such as a person’s birth month or the alphabetical order of students’ names—highlights the idea that seemingly arbitrary details can significantly affect life outcomes. These factors influence behavior indirectly, through mechanisms like societal structures and individual recognition. For instance, older children in a school year gain an advantage due to their relative maturity, while students with names early in the alphabet may receive more attention from teachers. These examples suggest that to a certain extent, social success is based upon arbitrary factors.
In the context of terrorism, however, the authors uncover a unique range of incentives that drive individuals toward extremist acts, and they also challenge mainstream assumptions on this topic. Contrary to the stereotype of terrorists as impoverished and uneducated, most come from relatively affluent and educated backgrounds. This finding emphasizes that terrorism requires resources, time, and ideological cultivation—luxuries that are not typically available to those who are extremely poor. The authors therefore delve into the hidden incentives that lead to extremism, positing that such individuals seek ideological fulfillment rather than financial gain. In this way, the authors’ argument shows that the motivations for behavior can differ drastically based on context. Furthermore, terror organizations themselves operate with clear economic incentives, aiming to achieve maximum societal disruption at minimal cost and effectively weaponizing fear to achieve disproportionate results. This pattern demonstrates that incentives, whether personal or organizational, can lead to significant behavioral outcomes.
In addition to examining incentives, Levitt and Dubner also expend considerable effort in examining The Role of Data and Economic Principles in Understanding Societal Issues, especially when it comes to unconventional topics. For example, they emphasize the importance of data in unpacking societal complexities, from understanding success to predicting terrorist behavior. The statistical analysis of success indicators, such as familial influence in baseball or birth month, relies heavily on data to uncover patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. By examining such patterns, the authors reveal how advantages accumulate over time, further demonstrating the predictive power of economic principles such as opportunity and access.
A prime example of this idea is provided in the author’s discussion of emergency rooms (ERs). Craig Feied’s development of Azyxxi (later renamed Amalga) highlights how the efficient collection and management of data can improve outcomes in overstressed environments. By addressing “datapenia,” Feied revolutionized how ERs functioned, reducing inefficiencies and improving communication between departments. The data collected through Amalga also provided insights into broader trends, such as the rapid obsolescence of medical technology and differences in patient outcomes based on factors like the amount of time doctors spent with patients. Levitt and Dubner therefore champion this example as key evidence in their broader argument for relying upon data-driven assessments to reach unconventional conclusions.
Their focus on data also extends to the sensitive topic of terrorism, and their discussion of this point indicates their determination to challenge common stereotypes about controversial social phenomena. The profiling of terrorists, which is based on factors like cell phone ownership, rental housing, and banking behavior, illustrates how detailed data analysis can narrow down potential threats. However, while this data-driven approach is powerful, the authors also acknowledge its limitations, such as the high rate of false positives in identifying potential terrorists. This acknowledgment underscores the complexity of applying economic principles to real-world issues, where precision often clashes with ethical and practical concerns.
A key theme in Chapter 2 is The Application of Unconventional Solutions to Global Challenges—from improving ER efficiency to understanding and mitigating terrorism. Craig Feied’s Azyxxi system exemplifies this. Instead of merely hiring more staff or increasing funding—both of which are conventional but limited solutions—Feied tackled one of the root causes of inefficiency: poor information management. By creating a streamlined system that allowed doctors to access and share critical data more effectively, Feied transformed the functioning of ERs and dramatically improved patient outcomes. The fact that Microsoft later adopted and scaled the technology underscores the system’s success as an innovative solution.
The broader discussion of emergency room challenges also reveals how unconventional thinking can address systemic problems. By identifying patterns in medical technology adoption and gendered differences in patient outcomes, the authors show that innovative approaches to data analysis can improve healthcare delivery. These examples underscore the idea that addressing global challenges often requires a willingness to rethink traditional assumptions and apply creative, data-driven solutions.
When it comes to terrorism, Levitt and Dubner adopt a similarly unconventional lens. They argue that terrorism is not just a moral or ideological problem but also an economic one. By framing terrorist acts in terms of cost-benefit analyses, they reveal that terror organizations strive to achieve maximum disruption with minimal effort. This perspective opens the door to solutions that address structural and logistical factors in addition to the usual ideological ones. For instance, the authors suggest that buying life insurance could help terrorists to evade detection. By framing this idea in terms of helping terrorists rather than hindering them, the authors create an intentionally provocative proposal and illustrate that analyzing behavior through an economic lens can yield unexpected insights.
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