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Drain on your health : Sanitation externalities from dirty drains in India
Title / Series / Name
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Public health
Hygiene
Wastewater
RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Geography, Planning and Development
Development
SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
Hygiene
Wastewater
RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Geography, Planning and Development
Development
SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/27506
Abstract
We highlight an overlooked channel of disease transmission in developing countries: dirty drains. We make the case that sanitation efforts should move to improve the condition of drains to build on increased toilet provision since they are a key transmission channel for waterborne diseases. We develop an economic model of sanitation externalities that incorporates the role of drains and then empirically examine the relationship between the sanitary quality of neighborhood drains and household ill-health incidence using a primary survey of 1,530 households from rural Uttarakhand, India. We find a strong and positive association between household ill-health incidence and dirty neighborhood drains, controlling for household toilet usage, community-level toilet availability, and an array of other household attributes. We employ a variety of robustness checks to validate our findings. Our findings suggest that bringing the policy focus to overall sanitation infrastructure will have substantial health returns.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2022-11
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1111/rode.12924