The objective of the study was to understand whether CDD approaches to rural infrastructure lead to an increase in social capital. Drawing on impact evaluations from 24 rural communities and hundreds of household surveys, the researchers looked at differences between beneficiary and control groups, reviewed findings by gender and age, and observed changes over time. The researchers observed that for cognitive social capital, the beneficiary communities performed better than control communities on issues of trust, solidarity and cooperation. Looking at structural social capital, such as the extent of community-based organization membership, no significant trends were found. The researchers, however, did observe more active household participation with CBO's if the community had a representative on the municipal council. Greater engagement by the community can be linked to network building, empowerment, and awareness of civic responsibility. Costa then described some of the characteristics of civic engagement. They concluded that subproject implementation through a CDD mechanism increases cognitive social capital, but participation in municipal councils is a more powerful mechanism for increasing structural social capital.
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