Monday, September 23, 2013

Can't Figure the Figures--Crop Insurance

Via Farm Policy, an article in Choices magazine on crop insurance, co-written by Keith Collins, formerly chief economist of USDA and now working for the crop insurance industry.

I have to assume the figures are accurate, but this figure from the article blows my mind:


It's deflated by crop prices somehow but seems to show some $60 billion in CCC payments in 2000.

[updated as follows]
Looking at the EWG database, there were about $23.5 billion in payments in 2000, excluding crop insurance, so it looks as if the deflator almost triples the payments in 2000.   While I can understand adjusting figures for inflation, i.e., using constant dollars, I don't the deflator.  I went to the CBO site, which I don't understand too well, and couldn't find the backup data for this, just their projections for the future.   

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