Prioritizing Job Creation without Undermining Public Works Construction among Road Improvement Projects in Rural Nicaragua

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 percen...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Garz, Seth, Perova, Elizaveta
Format: Journal Article
Published: Taylor and Francis 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36012
Description
Summary: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.