Can Integrated Rice-Fish System Increase Welfare of the Marginalized Extreme Poor in Bangladesh? A DID Matching Approach

Although Integrated Rice-Fish farming (IRFF) system is a potential technology but the adoption of IRFF farming system is very low and even decreasing. This raises the question of whether the returns and adoption of rice-fish systems are being adequately investigated. Most micro-level impact studies so far are based on cross-sectional data, which can lead to unreliable impact estimates, and also focus on productivity of IRFF systems, not its impact. This article presents results of a two-year panel survey with adopting and non-adopting indigenous farm households in Bangladesh to estimate the impact of adopting IRFF on small-scale indigenous farmers’ overall welfare. Using propensity score matching with a difference-in-difference estimator we found that adopting IRFF has a positive and statistically significant effect on household total income and expenditure, total farm income, number of days fish is consumed in a month and the quantity of fish consumption per day in a month