dc.contributor.author | Cook, Joseph | |
dc.contributor.author | Kimuyu, Peter | |
dc.contributor.author | Whittington, Dale | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2017-03-23T05:44:27Z | |
dc.date.available | 2017-03-23T05:44:27Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2016 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://www.efdinitiative.org/sites/default/files/publications/efd-dp-15-09.pdf | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11295/100703 | |
dc.description.abstract | As the disease burden of poor access to water and sanitation declines around
the world, the non-health benefits – mainly the time burden of water collection – will likely
grow in importance in sector funding decisions and investment analyses. We measure the
coping costs incurred by households in one area of rural Kenya. Sixty percent of the 387
households interviewed were collecting water outside the home, and household members were
spending an average of two to three hours doing so per day. We value these time costs using
an individual-level value of travel time estimate based on a stated preference experiment. We
compare these results to estimates obtained assuming that the value of time saved is a fraction of
unskilled wage rates. Coping cost estimates also include capital costs for storage and rainwater
collection, money paid either to water vendors or at sources that charge volumetrically, costs of
treating diarrhea cases, and expenditures on drinking water treatment (primarily boiling in our
site). Median total coping costs per month are approximately US$20 per month, higher than
average household water bills in many utilities in the United States, or 4.5% of reported monthly
cash income. We estimate that coping costs are greater than 10% of income for one-quarter of
households in our sample. They are also higher among poorer households. Even households
with unprotected private wells or connections to an intermittent piped network spend money on
water storage containers and on treating water they recognize as unsafe. | en_US |
dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
dc.publisher | University of Nairobi | en_US |
dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States | * |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ | * |
dc.title | The costs of coping with poor water supply in rural Kenya | en_US |
dc.type | Article | en_US |