Abstract
Remote areas are often characterized by lower welfare outcomes due to economic disadvantages and higher transaction costs for trade. But their poorer situation may also be linked to worse public service delivery. Relying on large household surveys in rural Ethiopia, we explore this by assessing the association of two measures of remoteness - (1) the distance of service centers to district capitals and (2) the distance of households to service centers (the last mile) - with public service delivery in agriculture and health sectors. In the agriculture sector, we document statistically significant and economically meaningful associations between exposure to agriculture extension and the two measures of remoteness. For health extension, only the last mile matters. These differences between the two sectors could be due to the fact that more remote villages tend to have fewer agriculture extension workers who also put in fewer hours than their peers in more connected areas. This does not apply in the health sector. These findings provide valuable inputs for policymakers aiming to improve inclusiveness in poor rural areas.
Highlights
Geography has been shown to be an important determinant of economic development
We model the exposure to extension services of household i that resides in community c of woreda w as a function of two measures of remoteness – the community's distance to the woreda capital (FFcccc) and the household's distance to the kebele center (LLiiiiii): (1)
In the case of health extension, the distance was measured at the travel time in minutes it takes by a car to reach the woreda center
Summary
Geography has been shown to be an important determinant of economic development. For example, it has been argued that landlocked countries – which are predominant in Africa – have performed economically worse as isolation and distance from the coast or navigable waterways are important deterrents to trade and, a cause of their sluggish growth and higher poverty (Bloom et al, 1998; Collier and Gunning, 1999; Sachs et al 2001). The availability of skilled health personnel decreases with remoteness (Dussault and Franceschini 2006) We contribute to this literature by studying how geography shapes public service delivery in rural Ethiopia.. We study how the remoteness of households from the service center is associated with differential access in rural areas in Ethiopia. This distinction is important as it leads to different policy implications to ensure the inclusiveness of remote areas or households in service provision. We rely on two large and geographically widespread household surveys to study access to public services in the agriculture and health sectors in rural Ethiopia. For both sectors we find suggestive evidence that the quality of the extension workers declines as we move to more remote areas; extension workers in remote communities are younger and are less experienced, educated, and knowledgeable
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