Health, Health Insurance, and Decision to Exit from Farming

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of health and health insurance on farmers’ exit decision-making process.
Using data from 2000 to 2007 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we tested the following three hypotheses: (1) Health condition
affects farmers’ exit decision; (2) Having health insurance discourages farmers from exiting; (3) Obtaining health insurance
helps farmers with physical health problems to continue farming. Empirical results indicated that having health insurance
has a positive effect on encouraging farmers to continue farming regardless of health condition. The study results also suggested
that farmer’s health condition and access to health insurance have noticeably larger marginal impacts on farmer’ exit decision
than income and other commonly-considered socio-economic and demographic variables.