The Aging U.S. Farmer: Should We Worry?

Harold O. Fried () and Loren W. Tauer ()
Additional contact information
Harold O. Fried: Union College
Loren W. Tauer: Cornell University

Chapter Chapter 16 in Advances in Efficiency and Productivity, 2016, pp 391-407 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The average age of the U.S. farmer continues to increase and exceeded 58 years in 2012. This aging of farmers is not unique to the U.S. If older farmers are less productive than younger farmers then agricultural output may diminish. Although Malmquist techniques are often used to measure productivity over time, we measure the productivity of farmers of various age cohorts with DEA techniques using the 50 state-level age cohort data from the 2012 U.S. Agricultural Census. We define a global technology comprising data from all age groups and states. Productivity of an age cohort in a state is then measured relative to data from all age groups rather than between adjacent ages. The efficiency component of a state age group is measured relative to the other state observations in that age group. Technology is measured as the Malmquist productivity value divided by efficiency. We find that the productivity of the age group of 35–44 years old is 3% more productive than the youngest farmers under the age of 25, but that the productivity of farmers over the age of 65 is 10% lower than the youngest farmers. The decrease in productivity of old farmers is due to technology because on average they remain efficient.

Keywords: Age productivity; DEA; Farmer productivity; Global technology; Malmquist (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:isochp:978-3-319-48461-7_16

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319484617

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-48461-7_16

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Series in Operations Research & Management Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().