Six federal reclamation projects and the distribution of income

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Abstract
The major concern of this paper is the effect of Bureau of Reclamation Irrigation Projects on the size distribution of income and means of evaluating these effects. Estimates of the before and after project distributions of income for six recent projects are provided. These estimates are based on Bureau data on the sizes of project farms and on benefit and cost data revised by the author. A social welfare function incorporating income distribution is used to calculate welfare‐weighted benefit‐cost ratios for comparison with the revised efficiency benefit‐cost ratios normally used in project evaluation. All projects were redistributing income in the ‘right’ direction. However, only one of the six projects had a welfare‐weighted benefit‐cost ratio greater than 1. (Key words: Agriculture; economics; planning; resources; water management; water resources)

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