The Relationship between Agriculture Water Use and Income as Based on Cross-Country Data

Mehrara, Mohsen; Hemmati, Ablolnaser; Sayehmiri, Ali

doi:10.22059/ijaedr.2012.28584

The Relationship between Agriculture Water Use and Income as Based on Cross-Country Data

Authors

Mohsen Mehrara

Ablolnaser Hemmati

Ali Sayehmiri

10.22059/ijaedr.2012.28584

Abstract

In recent years, the issue of global water scarcity has attracted increasing attention within academia, non-governmental organizations and as well as within the media. The aim of this paper is to ascertain whether there is a systematic relationship between agriculture water use and income, and particularly whether an inverted U-shaped relationship exists, as has been found for other resources and for pollutants through EKC hypothesis. Using a new cross section data set of agriculture water use for 163 countries in the world, signs of such a relationship has become evident, suggesting that agriculture water use may benefit from composition and technique effects opposite scale effects’. Some models have used into original and logarithmic expressions by line, quadratics and cubic functions to estimate the relationship between agriculture water use and income. The “turning point” level as agriculture water use and income relationship is estimated as $5074. According to the article’s results, the efficiency of water use in the agriculture sector, population and socioeconomic policies has an important role in affecting onagriculture water use.

Keywords

Agriculture water use

Inverted U-shape hypothesis

per capita

Turning point

water scarcity

Water withdrawal