US Child Safety Seat Laws: Are they Effective, and Who Complies?

Lauren E. Jones () and Nicolas Ziebarth ()
Additional contact information
Lauren E. Jones: Cornell University

No 9900, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper assesses the effectiveness of child safety seat laws. These laws progressively increased the mandatory age up to which children must be restrained in safety seats in cars. We use US Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data from 1978 to 2011 and rich state-time level variation in the implementation of these child safety seat laws for children of different ages. Increasing legal age thresholds is effective in increasing the actual age of child safety seat use. Across the child age distribution, restraint rates increase by about 30ppt in the long-run when the legal minimum age increases. However, we cannot reject the null hypothesis that restraining older children in safety seats does not reduce their likelihood to die in fatal accidents. We estimate that parents of 8.6M young children are "legal compliers." They compose an important target group for policymakers because these parents alter their parenting behavior when laws change.

Keywords: age requirements; child safety seats; fatalities; FARS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 K32 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hea, nep-law and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Journal of Policy Analysis and Management , 2017, 36 (3), 584–607

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Related works:
Journal Article: U.S. Child Safety Seat Laws: Are they Effective, and Who Complies? (2017)
Working Paper: US Child Safety Seat Laws: Are they Effective, and Who Complies? (2016)
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