The Impact of Uncertain Market Access: Evidence from Bridges in Nicaragua

Bridges to Prosperity builds footbridges in rural communities that are cut off from the outside world due to heavy rainfall for part of the year, isolating villages for days or weeks at a time. This project is concerned with measuring the impacts of these footbridges in rural Nicaragua on local food security, education, health care access, and other social and economic outcomes. Our completed impact will provide quantitative evidence on the effects of rural footbridges, and will allow for the use of the gathered data to ask deeper questions about the nature of rural poverty and to ask broader questions about the underlying sources of rural poverty, and potential alleviation strategies. This information may be used by Bridges to Prosperity to demonstrate the positive effects of footbridges to governments and grant-making organizations. If these effects are found to be large, this research will enable more bridges to be constructed in the future.