The quality of a country’s infrastructure largely determines the quality of life for its citizens.  Much like the tone at the top of a corporation radiates down to all employees, great infrastructure can have a profound impact on a country’s well being and a significant impact on economic growth.  Here are five reasons why we should be talking more about infrastructure:

1. It has an immediate impact on the economy

Karen Mills, a Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School explains,

“When we think about infrastructure spending, we think about its immediate effect on aggregate demand. If you repair a bridge you’re employing people right away, and they’re immediately earning income and spending that income throughout the economy. That creates demand across the small business economy, and nowhere is that more evident than in construction.”

As Mills points out later in her article, about 80 percent of jobs in construction are small businesses.  Thus, investing in infrastructure acts as an immediate stimulus (or continued growth) of the economy while providing the back-end benefit of ease of transportation.   Better roads and bridges allow for companies to ship their products.

2. Although we’ve made progress, we still have a long way to go

Broadband is a great example of how we have made amazing strides in improving wireless in the last 15 years, but a long way to go.  In 2000, 4% of Americans had connection to broadband and now over 80% have access.  Yet, the FCC found that over 55 million Americans or 17% of the population still lack advanced access to broadband and 35% of the nation’s schools lack access to fiber networks capable of supporting today’s digital learning tools.

3. Marginalized municipalities, like Flint, Michigan, are more susceptible to infrastructure crises.

As Myron Orfield, director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota Law School says, “The post-World War II suburbs are starting to sag, because they were not meant to last this long.  The housing is rotten, the infrastructure is rotten.” Orfield explains that it is the underprivileged communities with the smallest tax bases that he predicts will have the biggest problems.  West Philly is one example – where the water and sewer system is over 100 years old and already suffering from problems.  The city cannot afford the repairs it needs.

4. We need an evolving plan to protect critical infrastructure

The US government has listed sixteen sectors of critical infrastructure that are important to the functioning of the country and deserve protects of national security.  They range from chemical and commercial facilities to food and agriculture.  What surprises most people, as Kim Zetter in Wired writes, is that “after the Sony hack in 2014 that the government considered the entertainment company to be critical infrastructure, since motion picture production studios fall into the same protected category as commercial facilities like hotels, amusement parks, convention centers and sports stadiums.”  Therefore, it is crucial for the government to work hand in hand with the private sector to ensure pre-emptive protection.

5. The general public is largely unaware of some of the problems

Even more pressing and probably something of which the general public is not aware is the amount of money that is needed to repair some of our existing infrastructure. A 2008 study found that Pennsylvania requires $36.5 billion in repairs to its drinking and wastewater infrastructure by 2028.  A similar study concluded that the region surrounding DC needed approximately $58 billion.

It is for all of these reasons that,we as a country should be talking more about our infrastructure and making investment in infrastructure a priority.