Take the Highway? Paved roads and well-being in Africa

Elodie Djemaï, Andrew Clark and Conchita D'Ambrosio
Additional contact information
Elodie Djemaï: DIAL - Développement, institutions et analyses de long terme, LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL

Abstract: Public Goods aim to improve individual welfare. We investigate the causal consequences of roads on well-being in 24 African countries, instrumenting paved roads by 19th Century hypothetical lines between major ports and cities. We have data on over 32000 individuals, and consider both their objective and subjective well-being, via access to four basic needs and the subjective evaluation of living conditions respectively. Our instrumental-variable analysis suggests that roads reduce material deprivation, by improving access to basic needs, but that there is no causal relation between the distance to a road and subjective living conditions. The benefit of roads in providing basic needs then seems to be offset by worse outcomes in other domains.

Keywords: Roads; Subjective well-being; Basic needs; Material deprivation; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in World Development, 2024, 183, ⟨10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106691⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Take the Highway? Paved roads and well-being in Africa (2024)
Working Paper: Take the Highway? Paved roads and well-being in Africa (2024)
Working Paper: Take the Highway? Paved Roads and Well-Being in Africa (2023)
Working Paper: Take the Highway? Paved Roads and Well-Being in Africa (2023)
Working Paper: Take the highway? Paved roads and well-being in Africa (2021)
Working Paper: Take the Highway? Paved Roads and Well-Being in Africa (2021)
Working Paper: Take the highway? Paved roads and well-being in Africa (2021)
Working Paper: Take the Highway? Paved Roads and Well-Being in Africa (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-04748102

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106691

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Caroline Bauer ().