“Nonfarm” is the most important income category across all zones and it is especially important to higher income groups and in more accessible locations, despite the generally low level of economic development in the area. Forest income contributes 12–42% (village means), with important subsistence contributions in all zones, and important cash contributions in some villages. Forest Products is the most important income source in HFLA and HFHA villages. Agriculture (include Agriculture, Agroforest, and Livestock) has a steady role as the second most important source of income, providing roughly 30% in most income classes, with a slightly lower proportional contributions in low/middle-income groups, and always increasing in absolute terms from low- to high-income groups within each zone. Remittance payments make up a relatively small but still important component of income in all classes and all access zones.
Looking in more detail at the make-up of the forest products income (Table 2), it is startling to see the predominant role of fuelwood. It is by far the most important forest product and it is universally important, in all villages and in almost all households, though with substantially lower fuelwood used in LFHA villages. This is consistent with recent findings by the Poverty and Environment Network’s comparative analysis, where fuelwood emerged as the single most important forest product across a series of cases from throughout the tropics, contributing over 35% of forest income on an average (Angelsen & Jagger, 2014). In the Jharkhand study villages, only a small amount of fuelwood is sold, with more than 90% consumed within the household.