Successful scientific replication and extension of Levitt (2008) : Child seats are no safer than seat belts and improper use is life threatening.

Using US fatality data from 1975 to 2003, Levitt (2008) shows that child safety seats do not significantly reduce fatalities for children aged two to six as compared to standard seat belts. Although we were unable to gain access to the original program codes and dataset used, we could almost exactly replicate Levitt’s (2008) findings. We then show that the findings also hold for the years 2004 to 2011. As another extension, we fail to find evidence that SUVs provide additional safety for children. Finally, we show that improper child seat use is more dangerous than no child seat use. (Author/publisher)