Forest dependence is more than forest income: Development of a new index of forest product collection and livelihood resources

•Measuring forest dependence is important for informing joint poverty alleviation and forest conservation efforts.•Assessing household forest dependence is largely limited to measuring forest incomes.•We introduce a new household-level index, the Forest Dependence Index (FDI), which complements the forest income approach.•The FDI measures the importance of and labour involved in forest product collection, as well as livelihood resources.•A Malawi case study demonstrates that forest income may underestimate household forest dependence compared to the FDI.