Publication:
Evaluating the Impact of Infrastructure Rehabilitation Projects on Household Welfare in Rural Georgia

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (339.87 KB)
396 downloads
English Text (94.48 KB)
51 downloads
Published
2003-10
ISSN
Date
2014-04-25
Editor(s)
Abstract
The authors evaluate the effect of various community level infrastructure rehabilitation projects undertaken in rural Georgia on household well-being. Their analysis is based on combining household and community level survey data. The authors' empirical approach uses the panel structure of the data to control for time-invariant un-observables at the community level by applying propensity-score-matched double difference comparison. The results indicate that improvements in school and road infrastructure produce nontrivial welfare gains for the poor at the village and country levels. The impact of water rehabilitation projects is ambiguous. School rehabilitation projects produce the largest gains for the poor. The methodological lesson from this analysis is that ad hoc community surveys matched with ongoing nationally representative surveys can provide a feasible and low cost impact evaluation tool.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Lokshin, Michael; Yemtsov, Ruslan. 2003. Evaluating the Impact of Infrastructure Rehabilitation Projects on Household Welfare in Rural Georgia. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 3155. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18048 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
  • Publication
    The Economic Value of Weather Forecasts: A Quantitative Systematic Literature Review
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-10) Farkas, Hannah; Linsenmeier, Manuel; Talevi, Marta; Avner, Paolo; Jafino, Bramka Arga; Sidibe, Moussa
    This study systematically reviews the literature that quantifies the economic benefits of weather observations and forecasts in four weather-dependent economic sectors: agriculture, energy, transport, and disaster-risk management. The review covers 175 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 policy reports. Findings show that the literature is concentrated in high-income countries and most studies use theoretical models, followed by observational and then experimental research designs. Forecast horizons studied, meteorological variables and services, and monetization techniques vary markedly by sector. Estimated benefits even within specific subsectors span several orders of magnitude and broad uncertainty ranges. An econometric meta-analysis suggests that theoretical studies and studies in richer countries tend to report significantly larger values. Barriers that hinder value realization are identified on both the provider and user sides, with inadequate relevance, weak dissemination, and limited ability to act recurring across sectors. Policy reports rely heavily on back-of-the-envelope or recursive benefit-transfer estimates, rather than on the methods and results of the peer-reviewed literature, revealing a science-to-policy gap. These findings suggest substantial socioeconomic potential of hydrometeorological services around the world, but also knowledge gaps that require more valuation studies focusing on low- and middle-income countries, addressing provider- and user-side barriers and employing rigorous empirical valuation methods to complement and validate theoretical models.
  • Publication
    The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29) Abalo, Kodzovi; Boehlert, Brent; Bui, Thanh; Burns, Andrew; Castillo, Diego; Chewpreecha, Unnada; Haider, Alexander; Hallegatte, Stephane; Jooste, Charl; McIsaac, Florent; Ruberl, Heather; Smet, Kim; Strzepek, Ken
    Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.
  • Publication
    Labor Demand in the Age of Generative AI: Early Evidence from the U.S. Job Posting Data
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-18) Liu, Yan; Wang, He; Yu, Shu
    This paper examines the causal impact of generative artificial intelligence on U.S. labor demand using online job posting data. Exploiting ChatGPT’s release in November 2022 as an exogenous shock, the paper applies difference-in-differences and event study designs to estimate the job displacement effects of generative artificial intelligence. The identification strategy compares labor demand for occupations with high versus low artificial intelligence substitution vulnerability following ChatGPT’s launch, conditioning on similar generative artificial intelligence exposure levels to isolate substitution effects from complementary uses. The analysis uses 285 million job postings collected by Lightcast from the first quarter of 2018 to the second quarter of 2025Q2. The findings show that the number of postings for occupations with above-median artificial intelligence substitution scores fell by an average of 12 percent relative to those with below-median scores. The effect increased from 6 percent in the first year after the launch to 18 percent by the third year. Losses were particularly acute for entry-level positions that require neither advanced degrees (18 percent) nor extensive experience (20 percent), as well as those in administrative support (40 percent) and professional services (30 percent). Although generative artificial intelligence generates new occupations and enhances productivity, which may increase labor demand, early evidence suggests that some occupations may be less likely to be complemented by generative artificial intelligence than others.
  • Publication
    The Lasting Effects of Working while in School
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-18) Ferrando, Mery; Katzkowicz, Noemi; Le Barbanchon, Thomas; Ubfal, Diego
    This paper provides the first experimental evidence on the long-term effects of work-study programs, leveraging a randomized lottery design from a national program in Uruguay. Participation leads to a persistent 11 percent increase in formal labor earnings, observable seven years after the program. Effects are stronger for youth who participate during pivotal educational transitions and are larger for vulnerable youth and men, while remaining positive for women and non-vulnerable youth. The program is highly cost-effective, with average impacts exceeding those of job training programs and comparable to early childhood investments.
  • Publication
    It’s Not (Just) the Tariffs: Rethinking Non-Tariff Measures in a Fragmented Global Economy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-22) Taglioni, Daria; KEE, Hiau Looi
    As tariffs have declined, non-tariff measures (NTMs) have become central to trade policy, especially in high-income countries and regulated sectors like food and green technologies. Although NTMs may serve legitimate goals, they could also sort countries and firms into or out of markets based on compliance capacity and differences in product mix. Documenting recent advances in the estimation of ad valorem equivalents (AVEs), this paper uncovers new patterns of use and exposure of NTMs. High-income countries rely more heavily on NTMs relative to tariffs, while low- and middle-income countries face steeper AVEs on their exports. Firm-level evidence shows that NTMs disproportionately affect smaller firms, leading to market exit and concentration. Poorly designed NTMs can harm productivity and welfare, while coordinated, capacity-aware use can deliver inclusive outcomes. Policy design, transparency, and diagnostics must evolve to reflect the growing role—and risks—of NTMs in a fragmented global trade landscape.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Household Strategies for Coping with Poverty and Social Exclusion in Post-Crisis Russia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-02) Lokshin, Michael M.; Yemtsov, Ruslan
    What strategies have Russian households used, to cope with economic hardship in the wake of recent financial crisis? Which coping strategies have been most effective in reducing poverty for different groups of households? And how have people been able to adapt to the dramatic drop in formal cash incomes? The authors look at these questions using subjective evaluations of coping strategies used by household survey respondents to mitigate the effects of the Russian financial crisis on their welfare. The data come from two rounds (1996 and 1998) of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. The results of their analysis show that a household's choice of survival strategy, strongly depends on its human capital: the higher its level of human capital, the more likely it is to choose an active strategy (such as finding a supplementary job, or increasing home production). Households with low levels of human capital, those headed by pensioners, and those whose members have low levels of education, are more likely to suffer social exclusion. To prevent poverty from becoming entrenched, the trend toward marginalization, and impoverishment of these groups of households, needs to be monitored, and targeted policy interventions need to be undertaken to reverse the trend.
  • Publication
    Social Protection, Poverty and the Post-2015 Agenda
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05) Kanbur, Ravi; Fiszbein, Ariel; Yemtsov, Ruslan
    Social protection is absent from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and only recently has gained some prominence in the post-2015 discourse. In the past quarter century, however, rising inequality has often accompanied economic growth. At the same time, the growing importance of risk and vulnerability on the wellbeing of the poor has been recognized. Further, there is now a consensus on adopting more ambitious goals on poverty reduction. Defining social protection as a collection of programs that address risk, vulnerability, inequality and poverty through a system of transfers in cash or in kind, this paper argues that social protection needs to be on the post-2015 agenda as a key element of the discourse. It provides an empirical overview of social protection around the world based on the World Bank's Atlas of Social Protection: Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE) data set. Focusing on the goal of ending poverty, the paper estimates that social protection programs are currently preventing 150 million people from falling into poverty. Based on the data set, the paper develops, tentatively and for discussion, a set of candidate goals, indicators and targets for the acceleration of poverty reduction through social protection. The authors ask what it would take for social protection programs to contribute to halving the poverty gap in a country. They show that if all countries could achieve the actual poverty reduction efficiency already observed in the top quartile of countries, then 70 percent of the countries in the sample could achieve this goal. However, for 30 percent of the countries, even reaching the top quartile on efficiency will not be enough -- for these countries, the issue is one of budgetary adequacy.
  • Publication
    Impact of Social Fund on the Welfare of Rural Households : Evidence from the Nepal Poverty Alleviation Fund
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04) Parajuli, Dilip; Acharya, Gayatri; Chaudhury, Nazmul; Thapa, Bishnu Bahadur
    The Nepal Poverty Alleviation Fund is a World Bank supported community-driven development program. Its objective is to improve rural welfare, particularly for groups that have traditionally been excluded for reasons of gender, ethnicity, caste, and location. Since its launch in 2004, the Fund has covered the 40 poorest districts of the country, supported some 15,000 community organizations, and benefited more than 2.5 million people. This paper attempts to estimate the impact of this large-scale program using a randomized phase-in approach, in which certain localities are randomly selected for earlier intervention than others. Using two rounds of survey data and a difference-in-difference combined with instrumental variable estimation method, it finds statistically significant causal impact of the program on key welfare outcomes. The treatment-on-the-treated estimate on real per capita consumption is 19 percent growth. Other impacts include a 19 percentage points decline on incidence of food insecurity (defined as food sufficiency for six months or less) and a 15 percentage points increase in the school enrollment rate among 6-15 year-olds. Impacts (positive or negative) are yet to be detected on indicators associated with child malnutrition, social capital, and empowerment. The policy implications of these results should be of interest to the government and to development partners in determining what may be effective instruments to deliver services to marginalized communities in what remains a fragile and difficult political environment.
  • Publication
    Reducing Poverty through Growth and Social Policy Reform in Russia
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006) Shaban, Radwan; Asoaka, Hiromi; Barnes, Bob; Drebentsov, Vladimir; Langenbrunner, John; Zurab, Sajaia; Stevens, James; Tarr, David; Tesliuc, Emil; Shabalina, Olga; Yemtsov, Ruslan
    Following the 1998 financial crisis, four out of every ten people slipped into poverty, not able to meet basic needs. Luckily, post-crisis economic rebound was impressive and broad-based, albeit uneven across sectors and regions. This title explores the nature of poverty, both nationally and regionally, to identify the groups with a high poverty risk. It then examines growth-poverty linkages through the labor market, as well as the contribution of growth and inequality to the recent poverty reduction. It also considers the expected impact of WTO accession on overall growth and poverty. Finally, it focuses on the scope for improving social policy in ways that will have a direct impact on the poor.
  • Publication
    The Patterns and Determinants of Household Welfare Growth in Jordan : 2002-2010
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10) Mansour, Wael
    Jordan's economic growth in the past decade has translated into a significant rise in household consumption and a decline in poverty and inequality indicators. Yet, the sentiment of the overall population seems to point to worsening disparities. Using official household expenditure surveys for 2002, 2008, and 2010, this paper analyzes the patterns and determinants of household welfare growth and examines the extent to which economic growth has been inclusive of the more vulnerable groups. Using counterfactual decompositions, the paper dwells first on the dynamics observed behind the drop in poverty and inequality. It then carries out regression analysis using re-centered influence functions to examine the economic determinants of household welfare growth throughout the decade. The paper finds that welfare growth as opposed to welfare distribution was the main driver behind poverty reduction, and that the drop in inequality was primarily driven by a regional catching-up effect. In addition, the analysis identifies rent, access to human capital services, and more importantly employment in the services sector and the public sector as the major determinants of welfare growth in Jordan. Public hiring in particular was used extensively as a tool for poverty alleviation, especially for residents outside the capital.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Digital Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.
  • Publication
    Argentina Country Climate and Development Report
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) World Bank Group
    The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.
  • Publication
    Western Balkans 6 Country Climate and Development Report
    (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2024-07-16) World Bank Group
    This Regional Western Balkans Countries Climate and Development Report (CCDR) stands out in several ways. In a region that often lacks cohesive regional alliances, this report emphasizes how the challenges faced across countries are often common and interconnected, and, importantly, that climate action requires coordination on multiple fronts. Simultaneously, it illustrates the differences across countries, places, and people that require targeted strategies and interventions. This report demonstrates how shocks and stressors re intensifying and how investments in adaptation could bring significant benefits in the form of avoided losses, accelerated economic potential, and amplified social and economic spillovers. Given the region’s high emission and energy intensity and the limitations of its current fossil fuel-based development model, the report articulates a path to greener and more resilient growth, a path that is more consistent with the aspiration of accession to the EU. The report finds that the net zero transition can be undertaken without compromising the economic potential of the Western Balkans and that it could lead to higher growth than under the Reference Scenario (RS) with appropriate structural reforms.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2006
    (Washington, DC, 2005) World Bank
    This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.
  • Publication
    Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21) Luna-Bazaldua, Diego; Levin, Victoria; Liberman, Julia; Gala, Priyal Mukesh
    This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.