Abstract
As economists have focused on how cities promote economic growth by facilitating knowledge spillovers, human capital accumulation, agglomeration effects, and production technologies with increasing returns to scale, sociologists and anthropologists have highlighted another key impact of cities: their effects on psychological and behavioral traits. However, past work cannot easily distinguish selection from causal effects of cities. This project seeks to provide causal evidence about the impacts of access to cities in rural Africa on individuals' behaviors and psychological traits. We study the randomized rollout of a program promoting urban access in rural villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Implemented by a local NGO called Congo Helping Hands (CHH), this `City Access Program' (CAP) provides regular weekly transportation by motorbike taxi to the city of Kananga to individuals living in rural villages surrounding the city. Our project studies the effects of CHH's programs on the psychological traits of its participants.