Economics of Youth Farm Labor and Farm Injuries

The goal of this project is to explore the economics of youth working on family farms and the economic consequences of farm youth injury. The specific aims are to:

• Estimate the number and cost of injuries and deaths of youth while working or living on a farm, with breakdowns by type of farm, by region, and by major source/event (e.g., tractor injury);
• Estimate the permanent disability resulting from youth injury on farms;
• Estimate the financial impact of youth injury on farm families for some types of farms; and
• Compare injury rates and severities for hired youth, family youth, and adults doing farm work and analyze the cost-effectiveness of not letting children work on some type of farms from the perspective of a farm family.

We view translating research to practice as critical to the success of this project. From the outset, we will involve the National Children's Center as consultants to assure that our work will yield the information that farm families and farm safety professionals and advocates need. In the end, we will prepare articles for journals and farm magazines and a press release targeted to rural newspapers and farming newsletters.

The National Committee for Childhood Agricultural Injury Prevention's 1996 action plan identified economic consequences of childhood agricultural injury and the broader issue of child labor's effect on the economy of the family farm as research priorities. This project will be the first major analysis of these long-standing priorities. No objective information exists about how critical child labor is to the survival of different kinds of family farms..