The aim of this paper is to provide feedback on the question
of socioeconomic benefits from rural road development and
the impact of transport infrastructure on the poor, particularly
the poorest and the bottom 20 percent of the population.
This paper relies on impact evaluation methodologies,
which are traditionally used in social sectors but less so in
the transport sector. The study, including first surveys, was
launched in 2003 under the Tocantins Sustainable Regional
Development Project. The paper highlights the context that
led to the project’s design, which included an impact evaluation
of the works envisaged under the project. The paper
also highlights some of the main challenges faced by this
impact evaluation and how these challenges were addressed
for the present study. It then provides details about the data
collected during the surveys and the key relevant characteristics
of the population targeted by the surveys. It discusses
the possible estimation methods envisioned to undertake
the study and provides the main results of the assessment
based on these methods. The analysis shows that improved
rural roads changed people’s transport modal choice. People
used more public buses and individual motorized vehicles
after the rural road improvements. The paper also finds
that the project increased school attendance, particularly for
girls. Although the evidence is relatively weak in statistical
terms, it indicates that the project contributed to increasing
agricultural jobs and household income in certain regions.