Did fire grants lagged one year reduce fire casualties?
Table 3 presents the AFG grant findings from Models 1 through 4. The panel regression analysis is based on 10,033 fire departments that are observed for an average of 4.8 years. All of the standard errors reported in the following regression tables are robust to heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation.[49] In addition, the regressions are weighted by Census place population estimates. For Model 1, the dependent variable is the firefighter death rate. Controlling for the other explanatory variables, none of the coefficients for the AFG, FP&S, and SAFER grant variables has statistically significant associations with firefighter deaths per 1,000 residents. The lack of statistical significance for the fire grant coefficients strongly indicates that these grants have no effect on preventing firefighter deaths. The income per capita of the county where the fire departments reside is negatively associated with the firefighter death rate. While this association is small, it is statistically sig
