areas along a main road, expanding electricity access has a larger effect in rural areas; bringing an electric grid 10 km closer to areas with close road networks marginally increases the probability of working by 16.1 percentage points in rural areas, and by only 1.3 percentage points in urban areas. Additionally, the joint marginal effect of road and electricity access is positive and larger in rural areas. The rationale for such a result could simply be that rural areas have a larger percentage of unemployed laborers among their residents than is the case in urban areas; thus, the expansion of infrastructure creates employment opportunities to a greater degree for this unemployed and underemployed rural labor force.

Results based on the LSMS sample differ. While the estimated effects of roads and electricity are positive in rural areas (as in the DHS), both the marginal effect of roads and the joint effect of roads and electricity are negative. We should note that this discrepancy could be explained by the fact our LSMS sample is drawn mostly from rural areas. The representation of urban areas might not be sufficient. In Appendix Table 13, we present the OLS results, which reinforce the idea that roads and electricity play complementary roles in job creation in rural areas. In contrast to the IV estimates, the OLS estimates show complementarity for infrastructure investment impacts in urban areas.

We also analyze the differential effects of roads and electricity on low-skilled and high-skilled employment in urban and rural areas. The results are reported in Table 8 in the Appendix. The findings from both the LSMS and DHS samples show that low- and high-skilled employment respond differently to the expansion of infrastructure. Low-skilled employment decreases in rural areas but tends to increase in urban areas. By contrast, high-skilled employment tends to increase in both urban and rural areas. In areas along the grid, bringing road networks 10 km closer to a rural location marginally decreases the likelihood of working 56 percentage points in the DHS sample (column 4); in urban areas, bringing road networks 10 km closer increases the likelihood of working in a low-skilled occupation by 10 percentage points in the DHS sample (column 3). Similarly, in areas along a main road, bringing an electric grid 10 km closer in rural areas marginally decreases the likelihood of working in a low-skilled occupation by 27.3 percentage points in the DHS sample. The joint effect of roads and electricity is negative in rural areas, but positive in urban areas.

There are significant employment gains in high-skilled employment in response to the expansion of roads and electricity in both urban and rural areas, with few exceptions. In rural areas that are connected to electricity, bringing roads 10 km closer marginally increases this type of employment by 19.4percentage points in the LSMS sample, and by 13.0 percentage points in the DHS sample. In urban areas, the effect of increasing proximity of roads 10 km is positive in the LSMS sample (7 percentage points) but negative in the DHS (-2 percentage points), although the latter effect is not statistically significant. In rural areas with high access to roads, bringing electric grids 10 km closer marginally increases the probability of high-skilled employment by over 99 percentage points in the LSMS sample, and by 2.4 percentage points in the DHS sample. In urban areas, the corresponding effects are 14.7 (LSMS) and 1.5 (DHS) percentage points, respectively. In both urban and rural areas, the joint effect of expansion of the two types of infrastructure is positive and statistically significant, except in the DHS sample where it is negative and insignificant in urban areas. These findings are consistent with those of the OLS estimates (Table 14).

The findings imply that in urban areas, investment in road and electricity infrastructure promotes job creation in both low- and high-skilled occupations. However, in rural areas, there is clear occupational 27