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Since 1985, the Chinese government has given high priority to building roads, particularly high-quality roads that connect industrial centers. This report evaluates the contribution roads have made to poverty reduction and economic growth in China over the last two decades. It disaggregates road infrastructure into different classes to account for differences in their quality, and then estimates the impact of road investments on overall economic growth, agricultural growth, urban growth, urban poverty reduction, and rural poverty reduction. The report makes the case for a greater focus on low-quality and rural roads in future infrastructure investment strategies in China. It does so by showing how investing in low-quality and rural roads will generate larger marginal returns, raise more people out of poverty per yuan invested, and reduce regional development disparity more sharply than investing in high-quality roads. The study’s findings will have considerable implications for China’s infrastructure policy

Shenggen Fan is a senior research fellow in IFPRI’s Development Strategy and Governance Division.

Connie Chan-Kang was a research analyst in IFPRI’s Development Strategy and Governance Division at the time of contributing to this study. She is currently a research fellow at the University of Minnesota’s International Science and Technology Policy Center.

• Table of Contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, Foreword, Acknowledgments, and Summary
  (PDF 58K)
  
  
• Chapter 1: Introduction
  (PDF 35K)
  
  
• Chapter 2: Economic Growth, Regional Development, and Poverty Reduction
  (PDF 82K)
  
  
• Chapter 3: Development of Road Infrastructure
  (PDF 56K)
  
  
• Chapter 4: Infrastructure Development and Poverty Reduction: A Literature Survey
  (PDF 50K)
  
  
• Chapter 5: Conceptual Framework and Model
  (PDF 38K)
  
  
• Chapter 6: Data, Model Estimation, and Results
  (PDF 89K)
  
  
• Chapter 7: Conclusions
  (PDF 27K)
  
  
• References
  (PDF 44K)

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