I'd Have Sworn We Had More Kids!

Did you know that in 1986, with very little publicity, seven million children vanished in the U.S.?  You would think that something like that would have made the headlines.  Amazingly, none of those children's faces ever appeared on a milk carton because none were reported missing to authorities.  That the children had disappeared at all was discovered only by a vigilant government agency - none other than our beloved IRS.

You see, beginning in tax year 1986, federal income tax returns had to include the social security numbers for children listed as dependents.  After April 15, 1987, when the IRS tallied the returns for 1986, seven million children that were reported as dependents in 1985 were missing in 1986.  You can draw your own conclusions.

This information was taken from the book Freakonomics:  A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.  It was written by Steven Levitt, economics professor at the University of Chicago.  Read it and you will learn Professor Levitt's theory of how incentives - economic, social and moral - mould our behavior.

Remember who was President in 1986, the year all the children went missing?  It was Ronald Reagan, whose mantra when dealing with the Soviet Union AND the American taxpayer was "Trust, but verify!"