Good road infrastructure decreases travel time and improves accessibility to urban areas. Improved rural-urban linkages could also affect rural employment through decreased time and travel costs. To study this link, the paper analyzes the impact of good quality roads on agricultural and non-agricultural jobs in Armenia, using different sets of data and different methodological approaches. To address endogeneity and reverse causality issues of road quality, the paper uses a historical instrumental variable obtained by digitizing historical roads which were mainly used for military purposes - from a military-topographic map of the Caucasus from 1903. The results show that a shorter distance to a good quality road has a statistically significant positive impact on overall non-agricultural employment for men and women, increasing the likelihood of cash-earning jobs for rural women and skilled manual and non-seasonal employment for rural men. People are more likely to work outside their villages and work for more hours if they have access to good quality roads. The results are robust from the analysis of Demographic and Health Survey as well as the Integrated Living Conditions Survey of Armenia.
Authors
- Citation
- “ Pkhikidze, Nino . 2024 . Connectivity, Road Quality, and Jobs: Evidence from Armenia . Policy Research Working Paper; 10847 . © Washington, DC: World Bank . http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41888 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO . ”
- Collection(s)
- Policy Research Working Papers
- DOI
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-10847
- Identifier externaldocumentum
- 34362953
- Identifier internaldocumentum
- 34362953
- Pages
- 43
- Published in
- United States of America
- Region country
- Armenia
- RelationisPartofseries
- Policy Research Working Paper; 10847
- Report
- WPS10847
- Rights
- CC BY 3.0 IGO
- Rights Holder
- World Bank
- Rights URI
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/
- UNIT
- Infra ECA Transport (IECTR)
- URI
- https://hdl.handle.net/10986/41888
- date disclosure
- 2024-07-17
- region administrative
- Europe and Central Asia
- theme
- Rural Non-farm Income Generation,Rural Development,Private Sector Development,Rural Infrastructure and service delivery,Urban and Rural Development,Jobs
Files
Table of Contents
- Introduction 4
- Conceptual framework 7
- Background 9
- Data 11
- Integrated Living Conditions Survey 11
- Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 12
- Road quality data 14
- Methodology 15
- Empirical strategy 15
- Identification strategy 16
- Results 19
- ILCS 19
- DHS 24
- Robustness checks 29
- Discussion and conclusion 31
- Bibliography 31
- Appendix 39
