Publication: Prioritizing Job Creation without Undermining Public Works Construction among Road Improvement Projects in Rural Nicaragua
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Published
2021-04-20
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1943-9342
Date
2021-07-22
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We evaluate the impacts of a road rehabilitation workfare project in Nicaragua. Our results reveal that the substitution of labour-intensive manual paving of dirt roads for commercial paving technology did not undermine the primary goal of increasing access to a paved road, which grew by 16.4 percentage points. The project did not increase overall employment, but was associated with an increase in working as a labourer; though, we do not find specific substitution away from agriculture or self-employment as identified in other work. We also find impacts on education and health, extending similar findings from African and Asian regions.
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