IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea15/205407.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Household Income Volatility in U.S. Farm Households

Author

Listed:
  • Key, Nigel
  • Prager, Daniel
  • Burns, Christopher

Abstract

Farm households are subject to several sources of income instability, including yield and production fluctuations, disasters such as droughts or disease, input and output price changes, and varying levels of off-farm income. This paper assesses the income variability of households operating family farms in the continental United States. We find that income volatility varies between farm household subgroups, such as farm size, commodity specialization, and geographic location and that volatility has decreased between 1998 and 2010. Regression analysis shows that households operating crop farms, larger farms, and more highly leveraged farms have higher levels of volatility. Finally, we decompose the sources of income variance and analyze the role of federal agricultural program payments in reducing volatility.

Suggested Citation

  • Key, Nigel & Prager, Daniel & Burns, Christopher, 2015. "Household Income Volatility in U.S. Farm Households," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205407, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea15:205407
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.205407
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/205407/files/Key_%20Prager_%20Burns%20-%202015%20-%20AAEA%20Conference%20Paper%20-%20Income%20Volatility.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.205407?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Purdy, Barry M. & Langemeier, Michael R. & Featherstone, Allen M., 1997. "Financial Performance, Risk, And Specialization," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 29(1), pages 1-13, July.
    2. Ziliak, James P. & Hardy, Bradley & Bollinger, Christopher, 2011. "Earnings volatility in America: Evidence from matched CPS," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 742-754.
    3. Ashok K. Mishra & Barry K. Goodwin, 1997. "Farm Income Variability and the Supply of Off-Farm Labor," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 79(3), pages 880-887.
    4. Nigel Key & Michael J. Roberts, 2006. "Government Payments and Farm Business Survival," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 88(2), pages 382-392.
    5. Kenneth Poon & Alfons Weersink, 2011. "Factors affecting variability in farm and off‐farm income," Agricultural Finance Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 71(3), pages 379-397, November.
    6. Enjolras, Geoffroy & Capitanio, Fabian & Aubert, Magali & Adinolfi, Felice, 2012. "Direct payments, crop insurance and the volatility of farm income. Some evidence in France and in Italy," 123rd Seminar, February 23-24, 2012, Dublin, Ireland 122478, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    7. Ashok K. Mishra & Carmen L. Sandretto, 2002. "Stability of Farm Income and the Role of Nonfarm Income in U.S. Agriculture," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 24(1), pages 208-221.
    8. Key, Nigel D. & Roberts, Michael J., 2007. "Do Government Payments Influence Farm Size and Survival?," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 32(2), pages 1-19, August.
    9. Bradley Hardy & James P. Ziliak, 2014. "Decomposing Trends In Income Volatility: The “Wild Ride” At The Top And Bottom," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 459-476, January.
    10. Mishra, Ashok K. & El-Osta, Hisham S., 2005. "Decomposition of Variability in Farm Household Assets and Debt," Journal of Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics Association of Georgia, vol. 23(2), pages 1-20.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Key, Nigel & Prager, Daniel & Burns, Christopher, 2017. "Farm Household Income Volatility: An Analysis Using Panel Data From a National Survey," Economic Research Report 256710, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    2. Enjolras, Geoffroy & Capitanio, Fabian & Aubert, Magali & Adinolfi, Felice, 2012. "Direct payments, crop insurance and the volatility of farm income. Some evidence in France and in Italy," 123rd Seminar, February 23-24, 2012, Dublin, Ireland 122478, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Edward Knapp & Jason Loughrey, 2017. "The single farm payment and income risk in Irish farms 2005–2013," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, December.
    4. Harkness, Caroline & Areal, Francisco J. & Semenov, Mikhail A. & Senapati, Nimai & Shield, Ian F. & Bishop, Jacob, 2021. "Stability of farm income: The role of agricultural diversity and agri-environment scheme payments," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    5. Andrea Pufahl & Christoph R. Weiss, 2009. "Evaluating the effects of farm programmes: results from propensity score matching," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 36(1), pages 79-101, March.
    6. Ashok Mishra & Barry Goodwin, 2006. "Revenue insurance purchase decisions of farmers," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(2), pages 149-159.
    7. Mishra, Ashok K. & El-Osta, Hisham S. & Johnson, James D., 2004. "Succession In Family Farm Business: Empirical Evidence From The U.S. Farm Sector," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 20114, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    8. Azzam, Azzeddine & Walters, Cory & Kaus, Taylor, 2021. "Does subsidized crop insurance affect farm industry structure? Lessons from the U.S," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 1167-1180.
    9. Magali Aubert & Geoffroy Enjolras, 2016. "Do short food supply chains go hand in hand with environment-friendly practices? An analysis of French farms," International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 12(2), pages 189-213.
    10. Burns, Christopher & Prager, Daniel, "undated". "Do Direct Payments and Crop Insurance Influence Commercial Farm Survival and Decisions to Expand?," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235693, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. Sauer, Johannes & Finger, Robert, 2014. "Climate Risk Management Strategies in Agriculture – The Case of Flood Risk," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 172679, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. S. Severini & A. Tantari & G. Di Tommaso, 2016. "Do CAP direct payments stabilise farm income? Empirical evidences from a constant sample of Italian farms," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-17, December.
    13. Ryszard Kata & Małgorzata Wosiek, 2024. "Income Variability of Agricultural Households in Poland: A Descriptive Study," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-17, February.
    14. Tocco, Barbara & Davidova, Sophia & Bailey, Alastair, 2013. "The Impact of CAP Payments on the Exodus of Labour from Agriculture in Selected EU Member States," Working papers 160742, Factor Markets, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    15. Severini, Simone & Tantari, Antonella & Di Tommaso, Giuliano, 2016. "The instability of farm income. Empirical evidences on aggregation bias and heterogeneity among farm groups," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-19, April.
    16. Mishra, Ashok K. & El-Osta, Hisham S., 2002. "Risk Management Through Enterprise Diversification: A Farm-Level Analysis," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19711, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    17. Robert Moffitt & Sisi Zhang, 2018. "Income Volatility and the PSID: Past Research and New Results," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 277-280, May.
    18. Zhang, Jian & Mishra, Ashok K. & Zhu, Peixin, 2019. "Identifying livelihood strategies and transitions in rural China: Is land holding an obstacle?," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 107-117.
    19. de Mey, Yann & Wauters, Erwin & Lips, Markus & Schmid, Dirk & Vancauteren, Mark & Van Passel, Steven, 2014. "Farm household risk balancing in Switzerland and Belgium: an econometric and survey approach," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 186678, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    20. Celine Bignebat & Pierre-Marie Bosc & Philippe Perrier-Cornet, 2015. "Exploring structural transformation: a labour-based analysis of the evolution of French agricultural holdings 2000-2010," Post-Print hal-02740105, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Risk and Uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea15:205407. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.