FARM HOUSEHOLD LABOR ALLOCATION AND HIRED LABOR DEMANDS IN THE MIDWEST U.S.: THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT PAYMENTS

Maud Roucan-Kane () and Roman Keeney ()

No 07-11, Working Papers from Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract: In addition to farm work, most farm households in developed countries have at least one person working off-farm. The purpose of this paper is to examine if, and how, government payments, personal characteristics and household characteristics affect labor allocation of farm operators and their spouses, and the decisions to hire labor. We estimate an 8-regime multinomial logit model and a three equation multivariate probit model to quantify these impacts. Results indicate that age of household members is consistent with the life-cycle hypothesis on increasing then decreasing labor market par, and is positively associated with demand for hired labor. Hired farm labor and off farm activities increase with the operator education levels. As household size increases, a household member is more likely to work off the farm. Increasing net worth is found to have a positive impact on probability of spouses working on the farm as well as hired labor being used. Both coupled and decoupled payments increase demand for hired labor which is consistent both with farm expansion and reduced family labor time on the farm.

Keywords: government subsidies; government programs; time allocation; labor allocation; off-farm labor; farm labor; hired labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J22 Q12 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/6711/2/wp070011.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pae:wpaper:07-11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Debby Weber ().