Examining access to health insurance and health care along the life course to shed light on interactions between farm households’ social needs, social policy and the farm business

Rural studies scholars have highlighted the important role farm households play in propping up the farm business along the life course. Yet, little is known about how challenges facing farm households impact the farm business and how social safety nets may interact with household and business development trajectories. We use the example of US farm households’ access to health insurance and health care to develop empirical insights into these research gaps. We draw on a life course conceptual framework integrating the European and US literature and conduct bivariate analysis using age categories as the dependent variable on a primary dataset of 1,114 surveyed farm families. Difficulties meeting health care needs affected respondents at any age. Variations in trade-offs between consumption, savings and investments as farm households make health-related decisions hint at compounding effects over the life course on farm structure and transition timing. With biggest differences between households under and over 65 years of age (the threshold for universal public coverage), our findings highlight the importance of considering how social policies shape farm families’ (in) ability to meet their social needs and the connections to farm persistence.