If infrastructure helps both raise income levels and reduce income inequality, its development could offer a powerful tool for poverty reduction. Partly for this reason, infrastructure development has become a policy priority in many countries. In fact, infrastructure absorbed a major share of the fiscal stimulus deployed in the wake of the 2007–08 global crisis: on average, emerging and developing economies devoted 40 percent of the stimulus to infrastructure spending, while advanced economies devoted 21 percent (International Labor Organization 2011).