Impact of reform on household income in the key state-owned forest areas

Based on the survey data of 1 454 households in 24 forestry bureaus of 3 provinces, this research used both MEL and OLS methods to evaluate the impact of the reform on household’s per-capita income in the key state-owned forest areas. The study found that the proportion of both non-forestry income and income from
non-state-owned sector in households’ income was on the rise, which indicated that the households’ dependence on the forestry and state-owned sector was declining. In particular, the market-oriented reform, forest management and protection reform had significantly increased households’ per-capita income. The reform of both forest enterprise restructuring and permanent settlements of surplus employees had a significant effect on households’ income structure. The findings of this paper implied that the performance of current reform would help improve policy design and thus decrease the implementation costs of the further reform in the future.