Contribution of rural roads improvement on children’s school attendance: Evidence in Cambodia

Rural Transportation Infrastructure in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Review of Impacts, Implications, and Interventions

“…Despite these benefits that are vastly accepted by governments, NGOs, and economists [166], a variety of barriers to education persist, demonstrated by the 17% of adolescents and youth globally that are not in school [167]. Transportation infrastructure plays a critical role in ensuring that both students and teachers can access and utilize schools [168,169]. However, previous review papers describing rural transportation infrastructure and its impact upon education have only begun to elucidate evidence and useful conclusions.…”

“…A component of future study should focus on increasing directness and decreasing the cost of transportation to school, by identifying transportation programs and policies that function in parallel with other interventions [172]. Additionally, while many authors still support the construction of new schools over the construction of roads as the most effective intervention [166,168,169,174,181], future research should further investigate this approach and associated costs and benefits. Table 9 provides a summary of key points related to education while Table 10 summaries future research recommendations.…”

Essays on development economics

“…Meanwhile, investigated the relationship between rainfall variability, child labor, and schooling among children aged 7 to 19 years during the baseline period. In other related studies, ; Francisco &Tanaka (2019), andIdei et al (2020) focused on the effects of rural roads on children's education in India, the Philippines, and Cambodia, respectively, using data from children aged 5 to 20, 5 to 21, and 7 to 14 years. Our main analysis employs balanced individual-level panel data from children aged 7 to 18 years at the baseline, and we perform robustness checks by limiting the age range to 12, 14, and 16 years.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to analyze the effects of rural road access on children's labor allocation and educational outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Existing studies are mainly from other parts of the world including, India , the Philippines (Francisco & Tanaka, 2019), Bangladesh (Khandker et al, 2009) and Cambodia (Idei et al, 2020). 3 Our research will focus on SSA, where there is a substantial prevalence of child labor and educational exclusion among school-age children.…”

“…Contrary to this, others like ; Francisco & Tanaka (2019) documented the positive contribution of rural roads on school outcomes. Meanwhile, Idei et al (2020) argue that improved road access alone did not necessarily improve school outcomes. These mixed findings from the existing studies suggest that the effects of rural roads on human capital development may be context-dependent.…”