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Forest reliance across poverty groups in Tanzania

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  • Dokken, Therese

    (School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences)

  • Angelsen, Arild

    (School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences)

Abstract

An emerging body of knowledge has established that poorer households in forest adjacent communities in developing countries are generally more forest reliant (higher forest income share) while richer households tend to extract more and generate higher absolute forest income. These studies commonly categorize households based on observed income in cross-section data, presenting a snap-shot reflecting both inter-household and inter-annual income variation. In this paper we introduce a new approach to categorize households based on a combination of the observed one-year income and predicted income by an augmented asset approach. Applying this approach on household data from Tanzania, we find forest reliance to be high among structurally poor households (low observed income and assets). The highest forest reliance is, however, found among the stochastically non-poor households (high observed income and low assets), and this group also has the highest absolute forest income.

Suggested Citation

  • Dokken, Therese & Angelsen, Arild, 2015. "Forest reliance across poverty groups in Tanzania," Working Paper Series 06-2015, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, School of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nlsseb:2015_006
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Forest dependence; poverty categories; asset poverty; cross-sectional data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • Q23 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Forestry

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