Hired farmworkers make up a third of the total agricultural labor force and are critical to U.S. agricultural production, particularly in labor-intensive sectors such as fruits and vegetables. The hired farmworker labor market is unique because it includes a large population of relatively...

The first 50 years of the Federal crop insurance program were marked by low enrollment levels. To boost program participation, legislation in 1994 and 2000 increased premium subsidies. In the years since, the jump in enrollment coupled with high commodity prices caused significant increases in...

sector employment, uncovered sector employment, and unemployment. The impact of these labor market adjustments on absolute poverty will depend on how the pattern of employment composition changes within households and on how income is shared within households. An earlier paper (Fields and...

Beginning, limited-resource, and socially disadvantaged farmers make up as much as 40 percent of all U.S. farms. Some Federal conservation programs contain provisions that encourage participation by such “targeted” farmers and the 2008 Farm Act furthered these efforts. This report compares...

In this paper, we have recognized that the relatively constant inequality in the distribution of U.S. family income masks dramatic changes in the structure of the income distribution and the composition of personal incomes. Using relatively new procedures for decomposing the Gini measure of...

The relationship between financial structure and job growth is both an unexplored issue and a possible channel through which financial structure impacts income growth. We explore these issues using both longrun and shortrun models. Our shortrun model provides evidence of a robust relationship...