BELMONT, Massachusetts — It is easy for those living in developed countries to take for granted infrastructure such as roads, tunnels and bridges. But in developing countries, these facilitate so much more than mere travel; along with traffic, they carry prosperity and economic growth.
Essentially, high-quality transportation infrastructure allows a country to operate at its fullest potential.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, “it links urban and rural areas, connects the country internationally, facilitates access to basic services such as education and health, and contributes to the sound functioning of cities, rendering them more competitive.”
In countries like Indonesia, the quality of roads has had a significant impact on poverty. According to one study, areas of Indonesia with better roads exhibited a .33 percent decrease in poverty with every 1 percent growth in regional GDP. In contrast, provinces with poor quality roads only experienced a .09 percent decrease in poverty with the same amount of GDP growth.
Two other Asian countries, China and Vietnam also felt the effects of better roads. According to a report from the Asian Development Bank, a study conducted in China found “that roads significantly reduce poverty incidence through agricultural productivity and nonfarm employment.” This was particularly true among rural road projects where every 10,000 yuan spent on improvements brought 3.2 Chinese out of poverty.
In Vietnam, a study found a similar relationship between poverty and quality of roads. Households from rural areas with paved roads were 67 percent more likely to rise up from poverty than their counterparts in areas without paved roads.
But roads are not the only form of infrastructure that can help to tackle poverty; two other major players exist. The first is irrigation.
In rural agrarian areas, proper irrigation serves as an essential tool to the livelihood of farmers who might otherwise fail to make ends meet. Studies done in India, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines found that irrigated areas experienced significantly less poverty than those that remained unirrigated. In Bihar state India, regions with irrigation had 77 percent higher farm earnings than those that didn’t.
Electricity serves as another integral component of poverty-fighting infrastructure. As with irrigation, a study found that for every 10,000 yuan spent invested in electricity infrastructure 2.3 Chinese people left poverty.
Surprisingly though, electricity still plays a secondary role to other forms of infrastructure.
World Bank electrification projects in Bangladesh and India found that greater access to electricity improved poverty mainly by increasing the prevalence of irrigation. In fact, according to the Asian Development Bank, in some countries rural electrification provided few tangible benefits.
But it still serves to shift the outlooks of the impoverished; those given electricity through the World Bank programs felt more in control of their lives than before.
Yet infrastructure investment is not just beneficial for the developing world—in the most practical terms it is a necessity. According to the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, “between 2010 and 2030 world population will have increased by 2 billion, from 6.1 to 8.1 billion.
Most of this will be in the developing world, and virtually all of this will be in urban settlements. Responding to these urbanization pressures will require a major increase in infrastructure spending.”
This means that the developing world will have to spend $2.3 trillion per year by 2020 in order to keep up with their infrastructural needs. Needless to say, this is a gargantuan task.
But developing countries like El Salvador are up to the challenge. In tandem with the United Nations Development Program, this small Latin American country plans to invest over $52 million into its Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez international airport.
This includes resurfacing a 3,200 meter long primary runway which will extend its life by around 20 years. At an airport that receives around 2.5 million people per year, improvements like these are necessary and help to ensure El Salvador’s growth and put the developing country on track with its growing infrastructural needs.
Still, $52 million is just a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars of investment needed to expand the inadequate infrastructure of developing countries.
– Andrew Logan
Sources: Center for Climate Change Economics and Policy, United Nations Development Program, Asian Development Bank
Photo: Flickr