Reducing the number of pesticide-related illnesses: the impact on household incomes in Indonesia

The increasing number of human health problems caused by the use of pesticides serves as a warning to countries to develop preventive programs. Developing countries, however, are concerned about the effect of such programs on household incomes. With Indonesia as a case study, this paper presents a procedure to broaden a Social Accounting Matrix to include the impact of agricultural pesticide use on human health. This approach utilises the Constrained Fixed Price Multiplier method to analyse the effect, on the household incomes of different socio-economic classes, of government programs that are designed to reduce human pesticide-related illnesses. The results show that reducing such illnesses through the Safe Use of Pesticides program or the Integrated Pest Management program induces a more equal income distribution.