An Impact Evaluation of Education, Health, and Water Supply Investments by the Bolivian Social Investment Fund |
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| Authors: | Newman John; Pradhan Menno; Rawlings Laura B; Ridder Geert; Coa Ramiro; Evia Jose Luis |
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| Institution: | John Newman is Resident Representative with the World Bank in Bolivia; Menno Pradhan is with the Nutritional Science Department at Cornell University and the Economics Department at the Free University in Amsterdam; Laura Rawlings is with the Latin America and the Caribbean Region at the World Bank; Geert Ridder is with the Economics Department at the University of Southern California; Ramiro Coa is with the Statistics Department at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile at Universidad de Belo Horizonte; and Jose Luis Evia is a researcher at the Fundación Milenium. Their e-mail addresses are jnewman{at}worldbank.org, mpradhan{at}feweb.vu.nl, lrawlings{at}worldbank.org, ridder{at}usc.edu, rcoa{at}mat.puc.cl, and jlaevia{at}hotmail.com, respectively. |
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| Abstract: | This article reviews the results of an impact evaluation ofsmall-scale rural infrastructure projects in health, water,and education financed by the Bolivian Social Investment Fund.The impact evaluation used panel data on project beneficiariesand control or comparison groups and applied several evaluationmethodologies. An experimental design based on randomizationof the offer to participate in a social fund project was successfulin estimating impact when combined with bounds estimates toaddress noncompliance issues. Propensity score matching wasapplied to baseline data to reduce observable preprogram differencesbetween treatment and comparison groups. Results for educationprojects suggest that although they improved school infrastructure,they had little impact on education outcomes. In contrast, interventionsin health clinics, perhaps because they went beyond simply improvinginfrastructure, raised utilization rates and were associatedwith substantial declines in under-age-five mortality. Investmentsin small community water systems had no major impact on waterquality until combined with community-level training, thoughthey did increase the access to and the quantity of water. Thisincrease in quantity appears to have been sufficient to generatedeclines in under-age-five mortality similar in size to thoseassociated with the health interventions. |
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