May 2024

IZA DP No. 16988: On the Effects of Wildfires on Poverty in Bolivia

Gustavo J. Canavire Bacarreza, Alejandro Puerta-Cuartas, Andrey Ramos

This paper examines the impact of severe wildfire events on Bolivia's poverty and labor market outcomes. We use a panel from 2005 to 2020 utilizing NASA's MODIS Collection-6 MCD64A1 burned area product and household surveys. To attain survey representativeness at a lower geographical level, we aggregate neighboring municipalities using the max-p-region algorithm. Using the Interactive Fixed Effects Counterfactual Estimator, we estimate the causal effects of severe wildfire events on poverty, household per-capita income, and the agricultural sector. We find a significant short-term increase in poverty explained by a temporary decline in household per capita and, specifically, agricultural labor income.