Does the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission make a difference? An assessment of its first decade

When the US Congress created the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 1971, it was intended to: 1. conduct research on potential product hazards, 2. work with industry to develop voluntary safety standards, 3. set mandatory standards when the need arose, and 4. recall hazardous products from the marketplace. Pooled cross-sectional time-series data from 1961 to 1982 on states' accidental home death rates were utilized to examine the effectiveness of the CPSC. The results indicated that, between 1973 and 1982, the CPSC prevented an estimated 17,941 accidental home deaths. Although the findings supported the Consumer Federation of America's contention that the CPSC saves lives, the estimate of lives saved was much lower than that of the Consumer Federation.