USSeatBelts {AER} | R Documentation

## Effects of Mandatory Seat Belt Laws in the US

### Description

Balanced panel data for the years 1983–1997 from 50 US States, plus the District of Columbia, for assessing traffic fatalities and seat belt usage.

### Usage

    data("USSeatBelts")

### Format

A data frame containing 765 observations on 12 variables.

state

  factor indicating US state (abbreviation).

year

  factor indicating year.

miles

  millions of traffic miles per year.

fatalities

  number of fatalities per million of traffic miles (absolute frequencies of fatalities = `fatalities` times `miles`).

seatbelt

  seat belt usage rate, as self-reported by state population surveyed.

speed65

  factor. Is there a 65 mile per hour speed limit?

speed70

  factor. Is there a 70 (or higher) mile per hour speed limit?

drinkage

  factor. Is there a minimum drinking age of 21 years?

alcohol

  factor. Is there a maximum of 0.08 blood alcohol content?

income

  median per capita income (in current US dollar).

age

  mean age.

enforce

  factor indicating seat belt law enforcement (`"no"`, `"primary"`, `"secondary"`).

### Details

Some data series from Cohen and Einav (2003) have not been included in the data frame.

### Source

Online complements to Stock and Watson (2007).

### References

Cohen, A., and Einav, L. (2003). The Effects of Mandatory Seat Belt Laws on Driving Behavior and Traffic Fatalities. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 85, 828–843

Stock, J.H. and Watson, M.W. (2007). Introduction to Econometrics, 2nd ed. Boston: Addison Wesley.

### See Also

`StockWatson2007`

### Examples

    data("USSeatBelts")
    summary(USSeatBelts)

    library("lattice")
    xyplot(fatalities ~ as.numeric(as.character(year)) | state, data = USSeatBelts, type = "l")

[Package AER version 1.2-6 Index]