Title

Health, Health Insurance, and Decision to Exit from Farming

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2011

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of health and health insurance on farmers’ exit decision-making process. Using data from 2000 to 2007 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we tested the following three hypotheses: (1) Health condition affects farmers’ exit decision; (2) Having health insurance discourages farmers from exiting; (3) Obtaining health insurance helps farmers with physical health problems to continue farming. Empirical results indicated that having health insurance has a positive effect on encouraging farmers to continue farming regardless of health condition. The study results also suggested that farmer’s health condition and access to health insurance have noticeably larger marginal impacts on farmer’ exit decision than income and other commonly-considered socio-economic and demographic variables.

Publication Title

Journal of Family and Economic Issues

Volume

32

Issue

2

First Page

356

Last Page

372

DOI of Published Version

10.1007/s10834-011-9254-3

Publisher

Springer Verleg

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