Worker-Driven Social Responsibility and Infant Health: Evidence from the Fair Food Program

A growing body of research provides evidence of extensive economic and health disparities faced by migrant farmworkers and their families, underscoring the need for livable wages, health insurance, and better working conditions. Recent programs, such as the Fair Food Program (FFP) initiated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, have provided payment to workers from corporate-purchased premiums, yet no studies have explored the impacts of such programs on the health of the communities they target. In this study, we investigate whether implementing the FFP promoted health in farmworker communities by evaluating changes to infant health outcomes. Using restricted birth records data from the National Vital Statistics Systems from 2006 to 2018, we show that adopting the FFP was associated with reductions in low-weight births among foreign-born mothers from Latin America. These results underscore how strengthening labor and employment conditions for birthing parents may mitigate potential long-term or latent adverse health outcomes among US-born children.