Supporting Communities in Transition : The Impact of the Armenian Social Investment Fund
The Armenian Social Investment Fund supports communities' efforts to improve local infrastructure during Armenia's economic transition away from central planning, financing community-designed and -implemented projects to rehabilitate prim...
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC: World Bank
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/05/17741846/supporting-communities-transition-impact-armenian-social-investment-fund-impact-evaluation-social-funds http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17204 |
| Summary: | The Armenian Social Investment Fund
supports communities' efforts to improve local
infrastructure during Armenia's economic transition
away from central planning, financing community-designed and
-implemented projects to rehabilitate primary schools, water
systems, and other infrastructure. This article considers
the targeting, household impact, and community effects of
the social fund's activities. It relies on a nationally
representative household survey, oversampled in areas where
the social fund was active. Using propensity and pipeline
matching techniques to control for community self-selection
into the social fund, it evaluates the household effects of
rehabilitating schools and water systems. The results show
that the social fund reached poor households, particularly
in rural areas. Education projects increased
households' spending on education significantly and had
mild effects on school attendance. Potable water projects
increased household access to water and had mild positive
effects on health. Communities that completed a social fund
project were less likely than the comparison group to
complete other local infrastructure projects, suggesting
that social capital was expended in these early projects. By
contrast, communities that joined the social fund later and
had not yet completed their projects took more initiatives
not supported by the social fund. |
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