Impact Evaluation of a Rural Road Rehabilitation Project in Viet Nam

Are roads the key to raising living standards in poor rural areas? This study evaluates the impact of the World Bank–financed Viet Nam rural transport project I, a large-scale rural roads rehabilitation project that aims to reduce poverty. The analysis will focus on the welfare impacts of rural roads as an input to policy discussion about how best to allocate scarce public resources for poverty reduction. The key questions are: What are the impacts of rural roads on both the mean and distribution of living standards, broadly defined to include dimensions other than income, and what factors affect those impacts? How do the benefits and their distribution change over time? How much do benefits depend on other investments such as reflected in human capital endowments?