Integrating efficiency and Equality considerations in the Evaluation of Public Policies: The Case of an Afforestation Programme in Poland

From an economics perspective, forest policy can be evaluated using an efficiency criterion, but also from a distributional perspective. An instrument that can combine both-the efficiency and distribution al cost-benefit analysis-is presented. The traditional social cost benefit matrix is extended with a matrix showing changes in the distribution of income in the population. A third matrix is also included, combining efficiency and distributional estimators in an abbreviated social welfare functions manner. The procedure is applied to the Polish programme of afforestation of agricultural lands in the 1990s. The study refers to afforestation îfinanced from national public funds on lands of both public and private ownership. The results show improvements in both the income distribution and the social welfare due to the afforestation program.