The Risk Attitudes of U.S. Farmers: Comparisons to the General Population and Business Owners

I compare the risk attitudes of a large, representative sample of farmers to representative samples of the general population and of non-farm small business owners using a robust survey measure of risk tolerance. I find no difference between farmers and the general population in average risk tolerance while small business owners are significantly more risk tolerant than farmers. If farmers shared the same demographic profile as the general population, farmers would be significantly more risk tolerant while if farmers shared the profile of nonfarm business owners they would have similar risk tolerance.