Have the Key Priority Forestry Programs Really Impacted on China's Rural Household Income

Abstract

We use a large unique household panel data set spanning 16 years to estimate the impacts of three major Chinese forest conservation and reforestation programs on household incomes. The programs are the most significant of China’s Key Priority Forestry Programs, namely the Sloping Land Conversion Program (the SLCP), the Natural Forest Protection Program (the NFPP), and the Desertification Combating Program around Beijing and Tianjin (the DCBT). Cluster effects with county and environment factors have been estimated by using year dummy variables. Fixed model with cluster effects has been used. In addition to estimating the total impacts of the programs, individually and in combination, we disaggregate the effects by income source, stage of policy implementation, and duration of participation. We find minimal effects on total incomes from the programs overall, which are quiet different with other research empirical results, .but the more detailed results show that the initial stages of the programs, and the early years of participation had negative or neutral effects on land-based incomes, while in more recent years, impacts have improved, and in some cases become positive.