Does participation in communal water management improve household income? Evidence from Malawi

• Irrigation has a positive impact on net annual agricultural income of participating farmers.
• There is heterogeneous impact of irrigation among the marginalized farmers.
• Household income of the poor, youths and female farmers is enhanced by participating in the irrigation scheme.

This paper presents empirical evidence of whether participation in community water resource management improves household agricultural income using a case study of irrigation co-management under the Bwanje Valley Irrigation Scheme in Malawi. An endogenous switching regression was applied on a dataset of 412 farmers to correct the outcome (net agricultural income) for sample selection bias. Propensity score matching was then used to measure the impact of participation in irrigation co-management on net annual agricultural income. Despite variations in the magnitude of benefits among different groups, empirical evidence suggests that net annual agricultural income of the poor, youths and female-headed farmers participating in the scheme would have worsened had they not participated in the scheme.