99. How to Maximize Your Halloween Candy Haul

Is it as simple as going to the richest neighborhood you can find? Of course not ...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 0:43Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:25Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:54Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:31Speaker 01

  From APM, American Public Media and WNYC,

• 2:37Speaker 01

  this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace. Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Rizdal.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Time now for a little Freakonomics Radio. It's that moment every couple of weeks. We talk to Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name. It is The Hidden Side of Everything. And Dubner, you are in New York, and I'm going to guess that since you're on the radio today, you're warm and safe and dry, yes, from the storm?

• 3:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  I and mine are fine. We got very lucky. A lot of people, obviously, hurting in a lot of ways here, and all kinds of chaos in New York. Not surprisingly, the famous Village Halloween Parade tonight has been canceled. There'll probably be a pretty muted Halloween everywhere on the East Coast, but we're still hearing from other parts of the country, looking for answers. A listener in St. Louis named Vishal Dosanjh wrote to us with a Halloween dilemma. He has got an eight-year-old daughter named Sophia. She, of course, wants to go out trick-or-treating. But the neighborhood where they live is not so great. So here, I'll let Dad explain.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  I'd say it's on the higher end of a crime rate. There's not many people that are keeping their lights on on Halloween night. You know, there's not many people that have Halloween decorations.

• 3:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, little Sophia had made some observations based on Halloween's past.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, some neighborhoods give out more candy.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  I think it might be because maybe they have more money to buy candy or something like that.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, something like that. That's a pretty savvy eight-year-old man. I don't think my kids could figure that out.

• 4:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Exactly. And Vishal, her dad, wanted to know, so is little Sophia right? Do richer neighborhoods actually give out better candy on Halloween?

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, we turn to John List. He's a University of Chicago economist who's done a lot of research on a related topic of door-to-door charitable giving. And he's looked at both wealthy neighborhoods and less wealthy neighborhoods. Here's what he had to say.

• 4:25Speaker 05

  One of the best ways to go is to look for a community that is public-spirited and look for the wealthier parts of that community, and then to approach that community for your candy gifts.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  All right. First of all, that takes all the charm out of it, right? I mean, if you've got to get a spreadsheet out there to go trick-or-treating, man, you're doing something wrong. But straight-up wealth is not what he's talking about, right? Don't go immediately to the richest places in the richest places.

• 4:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's right. There are other factors to consider. We also talked to the folks at Zillow, the online real estate database, which created a trick-or-treat index, actually, trying to identify the best trick-or-treating neighborhoods in the top 20 trick-or-treating American cities. Here is Zillow's chief economist, Stan Humphries.

• 5:06Speaker 06

  From an economic perspective, we thought about children as kind of goal-maximizing automatons. What factors would you look at if you were trying to maximize your haul of candy on Halloween evening?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Goal-maximizing automatons. I'm pretty sure I'm appalled, actually. What does Zillow have to say about how it constructs this index? I mean, what do they use besides home value, which is what they're known for?

• 5:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so in addition to home value, they look at neighborhood density. It looks at a walkability score and crime data. Now, unfortunately, St. Louis, home of Vishal Dussange and his daughter Sophia, did not make Zillow's list of top 20 cities. But Zillow was good enough to run the numbers for us in St. Louis. And the neighborhood they came up with is St. Louis Hills, which is not too far from where the Dussanges live. It's got nice houses, close together, a good safety score. Here's Rick Bonish, who lives in St. Louis Hills. He says he and his wife spend about $300 on Halloween candy.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Wow, that's a lot of money.

• 6:03Speaker 07

  I mean, we have 20 houses on each side of the block. And so, every house is going to have somebody on their front porch giving out candy.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  But what if you're-- okay, this is going to sound terrible. What if you're like me, and you just turn off your lights and pretend you're not home on Halloween?

• 6:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  On that block, you will stick out like a sore thumb. But that's actually the point. John List points out that, you know, while giving away candy on Halloween is such small stakes, it looks a lot like the other giving that he studies. And what he's found is that while we give in some part to be truly generous, altruistic, we give in larger part because we want to be seen as being generous. Oh, that's so cynical.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  And what we find is that for every dollar given, roughly 70 cents of that dollar is due to social pressure and 30 cents is due to altruism.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  That's tough, man. 70/30. We've talked about this before, though. It's peer pressure, right? It's just really cynical.

• 6:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's exactly right. Kai, I do have a feeling that tonight, however, especially in the parts of the country where Sandy has hit hard, like here in New York, that 70/30 split might be about reversed because, you know, hardship really does bring out the best in us. So I have a feeling that tonight, the generosity and therefore the Halloween candy will be flowing. Hope so. At least my kids are getting ready to go.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  There you go. If you live in New Jersey, by the way, Governor Christie has postponed Halloween. It's now going to be November the 5th, in case you're keeping track. So, there you go. Stephen Dubner, he's back in a couple of weeks. Freakonomics.com is the website. See you, man.

• 7:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Happy Halloween, Kai.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, bah humbug.

• 7:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, podcast listeners, this is Stephen Dubner from Freakonomics Radio. Guess how many episodes we have now made?

• 7:46Speaker 05

  99!

• 7:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's right. Which means that next week is number?

• 7:51Speaker 05

  100!

• 7:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's right. So next week, listen in, we have a special episode for you that gives you the very best moments of our previous?

• 7:59Speaker 05

  100!

• 8:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Episodes.

• 8:02Speaker 08

  No, it would be 99 episodes if it's because you already, they just reused it to be the 99 episodes.

• 8:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, Sean, that's right. Thank you. So, listen in next week for the very best of our previous?

• 8:13Speaker 05

  99!

• 8:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Episodes on episode number?

• 8:17Speaker 05

  100!

• 8:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, that was good.

• 8:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thank you. All right, checks are in the mail.

• 8:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by EverPure. Is the value of AI not living up to the promise? The problem is probably your data, not your AI models. When it's scattered across different systems, getting your data AI-ready is a challenge. You keep your AI waiting, and everything slows down. EverPure unifies your data so you can see it, understand it, and control it all from one simple place, and get it AI-ready fast. Unlock the true value of your AI at everpuredata.com. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Ozempic. Innovation happens through rethinking what's possible, and when it comes to GLP-1s, Ozempic pill does just that.

• 9:11Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 9:56Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 10:10Speaker 09

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