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Charcoal production and household welfare in Uganda: a quantile regression approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2013

John Herbert Ainembabazi ,
Gerald Shively  and
Arild Angelsen
John Herbert Ainembabazi
Affiliation:
UMB School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, N-1432 Ås, Norway; and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Uganda. E-mail: J.Ainembabazi@cgiar.org
Gerald Shively
Affiliation:
UMB School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway; and Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University, USA. E-mail: shivelyg@purdue.edu
Arild Angelsen
Affiliation:
UMB School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway. E-mail: arild.angelsen@umb.no
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Abstract

Previous research suggests that forest-dependent households tend to be poorer than other groups, and that extreme reliance on forest resources might constitute a poverty trap. We provide an example in which a non-timber forest product – charcoal – appears to be providing a pathway out of poverty for some rural households in Uganda. Data come from households living adjacent to natural forests, some of whom engage in charcoal production. We use a semi-parametric method to identify the determinants of participation in charcoal production and a quantile regression decomposition to measure the heterogeneous effect of participation on household income. We find that younger households and those with few productive assets are more likely to engage in charcoal production. We also show that, as a result of their participation, charcoal producers are better off than non-charcoal producers in terms of income, even though they are worse off in terms of productive assets.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 18 , Issue 5 , October 2013 , pp. 537 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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