Assessing The Impact Of Rural Road Infrastructure On Poverty Reduction

The number of rural poor of China has decreased since the adopting of a national poverty reduction program by the central government of China. However, the poverty standard designed either by the Chinese government or by the World Bank narrowly focuses on income, whereas neglecting the non-income dimension of poverty, especially consumption of public goods. The comparatively lagging of rural infrastructure, in particular rural roads, is one of the common characteristics of the poor areas. Rural road infrastructure of poor areas has been greatly improved since the 1980s. The ongoing western development program has put emphasis on road construction in the plan of construction of infrastructure recently, and thus the rural road construction of the western region in which rural poor concentrates has attracted such importance as never happened before. Therefore, it is of great importance to discuss the efficient way of combining the construction of rural road infrastructure and poverty reduction by studying the impact of rural road infrastructure on poverty reduction.The livelihood activities of rural poor mainly take place at and around the village and between the village and market. The rural poor is burdened by great transport needs which usually satisfied on foot in the livelihood activities as a result of lacking of efficient accesses to some services. The improvement of rural road infrastructure in the last twenty years has provided basic access to road transportation services for the poor to some extent. Rural road infrastructure is intermediate means for reduction of income poverty and human poverty through the direct and indirect ways.Based on a farm-households data set collected in three counties from Shaanxi province, this investigation shows that the supply of rural road infrastructure in sample counties accommodates to some extent the needs of local social and economic development, and that the comparatively higher road intensity provides basic conditions for the improvement of mobility of farm households. But factors such as low population intensity and low land productivity restrict the efficient demand for road transport. In the last five years, the ratio of agricultural employment of sample farm households has decreased and nonagricultural employment increased, and thus the possibility of farm households benefiting from the improvement of rural road infrastructure has increased too. However, the poor have lower capacity to catch the chances of nonagricultural employment and as a result benefit less than the nonpoor. To get a thorough understanding theextent of impact of rural road infrastructure on poverty reduction, this paper goes on to make a quantitative model of the function of factors in the processes of income poverty formation. The estimates from an econometric model on the explanation of income poverty formation show that rural road infrastructure has a significant impact on poverty reduction, and that nonagricultural employment and higher human capital of farm household contribute a great to poverty alleviation, and that the risk of farm household become poor varies significantly with the variation of social and economic environment in different areas.The major findings of this study are: the rural road infrastructure has a significant impact on poverty reduction, and it is likely to contribute to poverty alleviation at the same time of improving rural road infrastructure. However the related preconditions should exist so as to bring the contribution to poverty reduction of rural road infrastructure into full play.