Serious Injury In Children Prevented By Both Child Safety Seats And Lap-And-Shoulder Seat Belts

Main Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 07 Sep 2008 - 6:00 PDT

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For young children, all states currently require the use of child safety seats, and the minimum age and weight requirements to graduate to seat belts has been increasing over time. A new study in the journal Economic Inquiry reveals that lap-and-shoulder seat belts perform as well as child safety seats in preventing serious injury. However, safety seats tend to be better at reducing less serious injuries.

Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago and author of the book Freakonomics and Joseph J. Doyle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyzed three large representative samples of crashes reported to the police, as well as linked hospital data, among motor vehicle passengers aged 2-6 years of age. Researchers used the data to compare seat belts and child safety seats in preventing injury.

Results show that lap-and-shoulder seat belts perform as well as child safety seats in preventing serious injury. Safety seats were associated with a statistically significant 25 percent reduction in less serious injuries. Lap belts are somewhat less effective than the other two types of restraints, but far superior to riding unrestrained.

"Our comparisons across restraint types incorporate the way they are used, or misused, in practice," the authors conclude. "Because many child safety seats are, in actual use, improperly installed, our estimates are likely to understate the benefits associated with their proper use. From a public policy perspective, however, understanding how safety devices work in practice, as opposed to under ideal circumstances, is of great importance."

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This study is published in Economic Inquiry.

Steven D. Levitt is affiliated with the University of Chicago.

Published since 1962, (formerly Western Economic Journal), EI is widely regarded as one of the top scholarly journals in its field. Besides containing research on all economics topic areas, a principal objective is to make each article understandable to economists who are not necessarily specialists in the article's topic area. Nine Nobel laureates are among EI's long list of prestigious authors.

Source: Amy Molnar
Wiley-Blackwell

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