The paper reports on a study being conducted to assess the impacts on living standards of a World Bank rural road rehabilitation project in Vietnam. The evaluation approach combines double differencing with propensity score matching methods. This "matched double difference" estimate gives an unbiased estimate of project impacts in the presence of unobserved time invariant factors influencing both the selection of project areas and outcomes. The authors' findings indicate that the project was pro-poor. Subject to a number of caveats, preliminary findings also suggest impact on road quality in project communes along with a shift in rehabilitation efforts from earth to paved roads. Impacts on living standards significantly vary across income groups, and the strongest impacts are for the poorest households, particularly, in terms of time savings. In general,there are indications of positive (or non-negative) impacts on the availability of services in the project communes.
Bibliography: van de Walle, Dominique and Dorothyjean Cratty. 2002. "Impact Evaluation of a Rural Road Rehabilitation Project." World Bank, Washington, DC.
