NERAP’s Baseline Survey and its Prospective Impact Evaluation Study

The NERAP prospective evaluation would explore the linkages between investments in rural roads and increase access to and usage of institutional services (social services, markets, and infrastructure), diversification of economic activities, and improvement of food consumption and non-food expenditures. This evaluation is structured around a quasi-experimental methodology, with the sample split between a ‘treatment group’ of villages which lie along 77 roads to be rehabilitated under NERAP and a ‘control group’ of villages which lie along roads with similar characteristics to NERAP roads, but which are not scheduled for rehabilitation works. Control group villages were selected with propensity score matching, based on geographical and demographic characteristics of roads and villages.

This baseline report describes the survey that was carried out in 566 villages across 120 districts in 22 provinces of rural Afghanistan as the baseline for the impact evaluation of NERAP, a program intended to facilitate the provision of a rural road access network that will connect households and communities to essential services and markets.

This report is focused on the socio-economic characteristics of households in villages where NERAP investments will take place, and to provide specific indicators for assessing the impacts of investments in roads in those villages. Household level results concerning specific baseline quantitative indicators for project impacts are as follow:

• Over 50 percent of households reported drawing water from unsafe water sources, such as unprotected springs, shallow open wells, or reservoirs. 43 percent of households reported having access to electricity. Regarding to access to health care, around 82 percent of respondents reporting that they received medical treatment to treat illnesses mainly in hospitals or from doctors outside hospitals. Over 50 percent of boys and girls who in villages along NERAP roads attend to school which is accessible by walking, on average, for half an hour.
• The most important source of income is agriculture and livestock. Almost 40 percent of NERAP households are engaged in farm-income activities. The average household income generated by the main source of income is estimated to be USD114 per month, varying from USD39 per month for the lowest income quintile to USD 275 for the upper quintile.
• 55 percent of NERAP households owns and cultivates its own land, which average size is 2.4 hectares. More than 50 percent of the households have access to irrigated land. The most important crops harvested during the last summer are wheat and barley. Only 27.29 percent of the household sold their production in the last year, from which almost 60 percent sold it in the market located in the district center.
• Nearly 50 percent of the households in treatment villages walk to the district center, whereas 20 percent uses rental cars. Around 60 percent of the households have gone to the district center from 20 to more than 100 times in one month.
• 40 percent of the households in treatment villages access the market in the district center. The most commonly used mode of transportation to access the food market is animals, mainly horses and donkeys, followed by rental cars (27.3 percent).