Estimating the Nonfatal Injury Undercount in Agriculture from 2004 to 2019

Details

• Personal Author:
  Beatty T ; Hill AE ; Picciotto I
• Description:
  The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides annual estimates of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses by U.S. industry sector. We performed a series of corrections to these estimates for each year from 2004 through 2019 to account for institutional and behavioral drivers of the undercount in the sample used to construct these estimates for the U.S. agricultural industry. Institutional factors consisted of the exclusion of small farms and self-employed and family workers, as well as the employment undercount due to the highly seasonal nature of agricultural work. Behavioral factors consisted of willful and negligent underreporting by employers. We updated the estimates using information on the number of people employed in the excluded portions of the agricultural industry and estimates of the underreporting rate from prior work. Over this period, we show that the government estimates only captured 13% to 26% of the true number of nonfatal injuries and illnesses, missing 74% to 87% of the true case counts each year. The government estimates were more accurate for crop production, missing an average of 77% of cases, than for animal production, missing an average of 83% of cases. Willful and negligent underreporting was the largest contributor to the undercount, followed by the exclusion of self-employed and unpaid family workers. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Agriculture Behavior Farmers Occupational Health Safety Small Business
• Keywords:
  Agricultural Workers Author Keywords: Agriculture Farm Workers Injuries Nonfatal Injuries And Illnesses Occupational Injuries Seasonal Factors Small Businesses Surveillance Survey Of Occupational Injuries And Illnesses Undercount

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• ISSN:
  1074-7583
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  California ; Colorado ; OSHA Region 8 ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  181-202
• Volume:
  28
• Issue:
  3
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20067812
• Citation:
  J Agric Saf Health 2022 Jul; 28(3):181-202
• Contact Point Address:
  Alexandra Estvan Hill, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA
• Email:
  alexandra.e.hill@colostate.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2022
• Performing Organization:
  University of California - Davis
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20010930
• Source Full Name:
  Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20270929
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:8514e9ba056f054ce6cbef5c6e424624d0c6bd4224377de3ab2935ff7bc8741c34e5ac0027e98b8451d12b7e3dd1fdb716f5daa36470e96aff52a6546b025c83
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/230068/cdc_230068_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.77 MB ]