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Abstract
We analyzed the impact that the advent of the salmon aquaculture industry had on income distribution in coastal communities. Specifically, we evaluated whether salmon farms generated significant changes on household income distribution in the remote coastal areas of the Los Lagos region in Chile between 1992 and 2002. Salmon farms were expected to generate new labor and income opportunities for the local population. The impact on income distribution in the area should depend on which type of households were favored with this increased labor demand: low-income or high-income households. We tested this by applying impact evaluation techniques. Changes in income distribution were measured using Gini, Theil, and Mean Log Deviation (MLD) indices. We used information generated by small area estimation methods to measure individual household incomes. This latter was utilized to calculate the distribution indices at the locality level. We controlled for pre-existing differences and observable characteristics in the treatment group. Our results show that income inequality in areas with salmon farms fell significantly compared to areas without farms and this attenuated a general trend towards increasing inequality in the rural sector. These results are conditioned by the zone of influence of salmon farming, since the distance between the farm and the locality plays an important role in the impact on inequality. Finally, our results suggest that improvements in the position of households with medium incomes explain the reduction in income inequality.
Important figures
Figure 2. Empirical income distributions for treated and control 2 locations at 9 km for years 1992 and 2002. 
Panel A shows that in 1992, income distributions in both treated and control areas were alike. By 2002, these distributions spread out more. Notably, the income in treated locations showed a stronger shift towards a bi-modal distribution, a trend not observed in the control group.
In Panel B, the comparison of income distribution changes from 1992 to 2002 for both treated and control groups is shown. While both groups experienced similar shifts, the treated group’s income distinctly tended towards a bi-modal distribution, a pattern not seen in the control group.
Table 6. The share of income in 1992 and 2002 for control 2 and treatment samples at different distances at the bottom 40%, middle 50%, and top 10% incomes of the population. 
Table 6 shows an increasing concentration of income in the top decile over time, a trend also seen in the entire rural population. This trend occurs in both control and treated groups. However, the increase in income disparity was less in areas with salmon farms compared to those without. This difference is particularly evident in the reduced income share of the middle 50% in the treated areas (clearly lower for treated population). Therefore, the introduction of salmon farms in remote coastal areas of the Los Lagos region appeared to moderate the overall rise in income inequality between 1992 and 2002.
Citation
@article{CARDENASRETAMAL2021102078,
title = {Impact assessment of salmon farming on income distribution in remote coastal areas: The Chilean case},
journal = {Food Policy},
volume = {101},
pages = {102078},
year = {2021},
issn = {0306-9192},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2021.102078},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919221000555},
author = {Roberto Cárdenas-Retamal and Jorge Dresdner-Cid and Adams Ceballos-Concha},
keywords = {Income distribution, Salmon aquaculture, Remote coastal areas, Impact evaluation, Chile}
}