Data Sets
" "  
Search ERS

 
Publications

Print this page Print | E-mail this link E-mail | Bookmark & Share Bookmark/share | Translate this page Translate | Text only Text only | resize text smallresize text mediumresize text large

Economic Well-Being of Farm Households

Cover Image

By Carol A. Jones, Hisham El-Osta, and Robert Green

Economic Brief No. (EB-7) 4 pp, March 2006

Farm subsidy programs were introduced in the 1930s largely due to concern for chronically low, and highly variable, incomes of US farm households. Today commodity-based support programs are still prominent, though income and wealth of the average farm household now exceed that of the average nonfarm households - by a large margin. Farm income continues to be highly variable, but the small set of farm households most at risk for income variability - because farm income represents more than one-third of household income - are those operating large farms. And they have substantial net worth, which cushions uncertain farm income.

Keywords: Farm households, household income, household wealth, household net worth, living expenses, joint income-wealth indicator, economic well-being, financial well-being, Off-farm employment, Income variability, ERS, USDA

In this report ...

Chapters are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Order this report (stock #EB-7)

Updated date: March 14, 2006

For more information, contact: webadmin@ers.usda.gov

Web administration: webadmin@ers.usda.gov