Marine Parks and Household Poverty in Tanzania: A Baseline Analysis

This paper offers a baseline data for future assessment of the extent to which Marine Parks improve households’ welfare and reduce poverty in the Tanzanian Coastal area. Household Budget Survey

Data was collected from 24 villages along the coast of Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar. Axiomatically preferred poverty indices are used in this paper to assess relative poverty between villages currently in the Marine Parks and villages that are outside the Marine Parks. The analysis is buttressed by stochastic dominance tests to ensure that the results are robust to any reasonable alteration of poverty line. The paper finds widespread poverty but no notable difference in poverty between villages in the Marine Park Areas and villages outside the Marine Parks. This is important baseline information for future analysis of the impact of Marine Parks on households’ welfare