Evaluation of a Rural Road Rehabilitation Project in Armenia

In this report, we present key findings of an impact evaluation of the Rural Road Rehabilitation Project (RRRP) in Armenia. The RRRP was originally conceived as part of a five-year, $236 million Compact between the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and Armenia designed to increase household income and reduce poverty in rural Armenia. The Compact, managed by the Millennium Challenge Account with Armenia (MCA-Armenia), included two projects: (1) the Irrigated Agriculture Project, which comprised irrigation infrastructure rehabilitation, farmer training, technical assistance to water user associations and postharvest enterprises, and access to credit for farms and agribusiness; and (2) the RRRP, which is the subject of this report. We used a difference-in-differences framework to analyze RRRP impacts. The central idea behind difference-in-differences estimation is to estimate how outcomes changed for communities served by treatment roads before and after road rehabilitation (the first difference) and compare this to how outcomes changed for communities served by comparison roads over the same time period (the second difference). The difference between these two differences is the estimated RRRP impact for these roads.