The political economy of global deforestation

Much of the social science research on deforestation has largely been focused on two main variables thought to be key in the causal chain leading to forest loss: (1) income and (2) population growth. The purpose for this research is to empirically analyze whether income and population growth matter after controlling for other relevant factors. Secondly, this research attempts to determine whether the income level and population growth theories still hold in general, from a global perspective. The results from this study demonstrate that both income and population growth have a statistically significant relationship with deforestation even when controlling for the other factors discussed (with the exception of land tenure) and when looking at a large, cross-sectional sample of countries. This finding indicates that both population growth and income have a very robust relationship with deforestation.