Impact of integrated aquaculture-agriculture value chain participation on welfare of marginalized indigenous households in Bangladesh: A panel data analysis

Abstract

This study examines the impact of integrated aquaculture-agriculture (IAA) value chain participation dynamics on the welfare of indigenous households using a three-wave household panel dataset from Bangladesh. An innovation of this study is that distributional effects of IAA value chain participation dynamics is investigated by examining economic impacts on all actors across the IAA value chains. We applied random-effects, standard fixed-effects, Heckit panel, and control function approaches to control for endogeneity of IAA value chain participation and unobserved heterogeneity. We found that IAA value chain participation is positively associated with household income and diet quality depicted by the consumption frequency of certain foods, especially fish consumption, and the benefits do not continue to accrue after discontinuing participation. The results also reveal that IAA value chain participation has higher impacts on the welfare of households who were involved in production related IAA value chain activities than upstream and downstream IAA value chain activities.