Rural Roads, Poverty, and Resilience : Evidence from Ethiopia
This study analyzes the impacts of the recent rural road development in Ethiopia on welfare and economic outcomes. The identification of the impacts relies on a difference-in-differences matching approach, taking advantage of the nationally represe...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/220781554130465463/Rural-Roads-Poverty-and-Resilience-Evidence-from-Ethiopia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31495 |
| Summary: | This study analyzes the impacts of the
recent rural road development in Ethiopia on welfare and
economic outcomes. The identification of the impacts relies
on a difference-in-differences matching approach, taking
advantage of the nationally representative household survey
and the original road database, both of which are panel data
spanning between 2012 and 2016. The results of the
econometric analysis overall suggest that Ethiopia's
recent rural road development has substantially increased
household welfare and supported households in coping with
the recent severe droughts. This study estimates that rural
roads increased, on average, household consumption by 16.1
percent between 2012 and 2016 (or 3.8 percent per year). The
effects of rural road development were largest in the most
remote communities, as it increased household consumption by
27.9 percent. Furthermore, in the communities most affected
by the El Niño drought, the likelihood of falling into
poverty was 14.4 percent lower between 2012 and 2016 if the
community was connected by a rural road. Taken together, the
results suggest that, by connecting remote communities to
markets, rural roads have substantially increased the
welfare and resilience of rural households in shock-prone environments. |
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