----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEP: New Economics Papers
Agricultural Economics
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edited by: Angelo Zago
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pza49.html
Universita degli Studi di Verona
Date: 2005-08-28
Papers: 1
This document is in the public domain, feel free to circulate it.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ Note: Access to full contents may be restricted +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In this issue we have:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Poverty and the Environment-Exploring the Relationship
between Household Incomes, Private Assets and Natural Assets
Urvashi Narain; Shreekant Gupta; Klaas vant Veld
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Poverty and the Environment-Exploring the Relationship
between Household Incomes, Private Assets and Natural Assets
Urvashi Narain (Resources for the Future, Washington DC)
Shreekant Gupta (Delhi School of Economics)
Klaas vant Veld (University of Wyoming, Laramie)
Using purpose-collected survey data from 535 households in 60
different villages of the Jhabua district of India, this paper
investigates the extent to which rural households depend on
common-pool natural resources for their daily livelihood.
Previous studies have found that resource dependence-- defined as
the fraction of total income derived from common-pool resources--
strongly decreases with income. Our study uncovers a more complex
relationship. Firstly, for the subsample of households that use
positive amounts of resources, we find that dependence follows a
U-shaped relationship with income, declining at first but then
increasing. Secondly, we find that the probability of being in
the subsample of common-pool resource users follows an inverse U-
shaped relationship with income - the poorest and richest
households are less likely to collect resources than those with
intermediate incomes. Resource use by the rich is therefore
bimodal - either very high or--for the very rich households--zero.
Thirdly, we find that resource dependence increases at all
income levels with an increase in the level of common-pool
biomass availability. The combination of these results suggests
that the quality of natural resources matters to a larger share
of the rural population than had previously been believed, common-
pool resources contribute a significant fraction of the income
not just of the desperately poor, but also of the relatively rich.
Keywords: India, Madhya Pradesh, poverty, environment, common-
pool natural resources,rural households
JEL: Q2 D31 Q12 Q56 O13 I32
Date: 2005-04
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cde:cdewps:134&r=agr
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/nep-agr/attachments/20050831/218a5d15/attachment.htm
