Are there lasting impacts of aid to poor areas?Shaohua Chen, Ren Mu and Martin Ravallion () Journal of Public Economics, 2009, vol. 93, issue 3-4, pages 512-528 Abstract: The paper re-visits the site of a large, World Bank-financed, rural development program in China, 10years after it began and four years after disbursements ended. The program emphasized community participation in multi-sectoral interventions (including farming, animal husbandry, infrastructure and social services). Data were collected on 2000 households in project and non-project areas, spanning 10years. A double-difference estimator of the program's impact (on top of pre-existing governmental programs) reveals sizeable short-term income gains that were mostly saved. Only small and statistically insignificant gains to mean consumption emerged in the longer-term -- though in rough accord with the average gain to permanent income. The use of community-based beneficiary selection greatly reduced the overall impact, given that the educated poor were under-covered. The main results are robust to corrections for various sources of selection bias, including village targeting and interference due to spillover effects generated by the response of local governments to the external aid. Keywords: Poor-areas; Aid; Credit; Rural; development; Impact; evaluation; Spillover; effects; China (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:93:y:2009:i:3-4:p:512-528 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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