Publication: Sanitation and Externalities : Evidence from Early Childhood Health in Rural India
Date
2014-01
ISSN
Published
2014-01
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper estimates two sources of
benefits related to sanitation infrastructure access on
early childhood health: a direct benefit a household
receives when moving from open to fixed-point defecation or
from unimproved sanitation to improved sanitation, and an
external benefit (externality) produced by the
neighborhood's access to sanitation infrastructure. The
paper uses a sample of children under 48 months in rural
areas of India from the Third Round of District Level
Household Survey 2007-08 and finds evidence of positive and
significant direct benefits and concave positive external
effects for both improved sanitation and fixed-point
defecation. There is a 47 percent reduction in diarrhea
prevalence between children living in a household without
access to improved sanitation in a village without coverage
of improved sanitation and children living in a household
with access to improved sanitation in a village with
complete coverage. One-fourth of this benefit is due to the
direct benefit leaving the rest to external gains. Finally,
all the benefits from eliminating open defecation come from
improved sanitation and not other sanitation solutions.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Andres, Luis A.; Briceno, Bertha; Chase, Claire; Echenique, Juan A.. 2014. Sanitation and Externalities : Evidence from Early Childhood Health in Rural India. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 6737. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16812 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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