Subsidies to promote tree plantations have been questioned because of negative impacts of the forestry industry. Quantitative evidence on the socioeconomic impacts of afforestation subsidies or of tree plantations is elusive, mainly due to data scarcity. We assess the overall impact of a tree plantation subsidy in Chile, using our original 20-year panel dataset that includes small area estimates of poverty and the subsidy assignment at the census-district scale. We show that forestry subsidies – on average – in fact, do increase poverty. More specifically, using difference in difference with matching techniques, and instrumental variables approaches, we show that there is an increase of about 2 per cent in the poverty rate of treated localities. We identify employment as a causal mechanism explaining this finding, since we found a negative effect of tree plantations on employment, and therefore, on poverty. We suggest reassessment of the distributional effects of the forest subsidy and forestry industry.

中文翻译：

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人工林的隐藏福利效应

由于林业的负面影响，促进植树造林的补贴受到质疑。关于造林补贴或植树造林的社会经济影响的定量证据难以捉摸，主要是由于数据稀缺。我们使用我们最初的 20 年面板数据集评估智利植树造林补贴的整体影响，其中包括小区域贫困估计和人口普查区规模的补贴分配。我们表明，林业补贴——平均而言——实际上确实增加了贫困。更具体地说，使用匹配技术和工具变量方法的差异，我们表明，处理地区的贫困率增加了约 2%。我们将就业确定为解释这一发现的因果机制，因为我们发现植树造林对就业有负面影响，因此对贫困也有负面影响。我们建议重新评估森林补贴和林业的分配效应。