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

Author

Listed:
  • Lauren E. Jones

    (Ohio State University, Department of Human Sciences)

  • Nicolas Ziebarth

    (Cornell University)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Lauren E. Jones & Nicolas Ziebarth, 2016. "US Child Safety Seat Laws: Are they Effective, and Who Complies?," CINCH Working Paper Series 1603, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Competent in Competition and Health, revised Mar 2016.
    • Handle: RePEc:duh:wpaper:1603
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. D. Mark Anderson & Sina Sandholt, 2019. "Are Booster Seats More Effective than Child Safety Seats or Seat Belts at Reducing Traffic Fatalities among Children?," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 5(1), pages 42-64, Winter.
    3. Fischer, Martin & Karlsson, Martin & Prodromidis, Nikolaos, 2021. "Long‐term Effects of Hospital Deliveries," CINCH Working Paper Series (since 2020) 74712, Duisburg-Essen University Library, DuEPublico.
    4. Dafeng Xu, 2020. "Free Wheel, Free Will! The Effects of Bikeshare Systems on Urban Commuting Patterns in the U.S," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(3), pages 664-685, June.
    5. Kronenberg, Christoph, 2020. "New(spaper) Evidence of a Reduction in Suicide Mentions during the 19th‐century US Gold Rush," CINCH Working Paper Series (since 2020) 73382, Duisburg-Essen University Library, DuEPublico.
    6. Elizabeth Lemmon, 2018. "Utilisation of personal care services in Scotland: the influence of unpaid carers," CINCH Working Paper Series 1802, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Competent in Competition and Health.
    7. Milad Delavary Foroutaghe & Abolfazl Mohammadzadeh Moghaddam & Vahid Fakoor, 2019. "Time trends in gender-specific incidence rates of road traffic injuries in Iran," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-15, May.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Child safety seats; age requirements; fatalities; FARS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety Law
    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise

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