Does Project-Level Aid for Water and Sanitation Improve Child Health Outcomes? Evidence from Household Panel Data in Uganda

Aid
Water & Sanitation
Child Health
Africa
Uganda
This paper examines the effectiveness of WASH aid projects in Uganda by analyzing geocoded data on project locations and household access to water. The findings suggest that while these aid-funded projects improve access to improved water sources, they also increase the time burden for households due to longer travel distances and wait times, indicating that the supply of water sources is still insufficient to meet demand in high-density areas.
Authors
Affiliations

Lynda Pickbourn

Mount Holyoke College

Raymond Caraher

Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Léonce Ndikumana

Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Published

November 1, 2022

Abstract

Empirical studies on the effectiveness of aid to the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector (WASH aid) have focused primarily on access to these services as the benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of aid in this sector. Given the importance of WASH services for public health outcomes, the effectiveness of WASH aid should also be evaluated in terms of its impact on health outcomes. This is especially important in low- and middle-income countries where achieving sustained improvements in child health outcomes remains a challenge. This paper uses geocoded sub-national data on the location of WASH aid projects in Uganda in conjunction with six waves of nationally representative household-level panel survey data to examine the impact of aid-funded WASH projects on the probability of stunting among Ugandan children and infants. Analysing aid effectiveness at the sub-national level avoids the problems of cross-country heterogeneity in aid effectiveness that plagues other studies. Results of the difference-in-differences regression analysis suggest that proximity to an aid-funded WASH project reduces the probability of stunting by 14–21 percent. The results suggest that scaling up aid to the WASH sector can help improve child health outcomes in the country.

Preprint

Key Figures

Stunting Rates for Children by Distance to Project and Project Type

Citation

BibTeX citation:
@article{pickbourn2022,
  author = {Pickbourn, Lynda and Caraher, Raymond and Ndikumana, Léonce},
  title = {Does {Project-Level} {Aid} for {Water} and {Sanitation}
    {Improve} {Child} {Health} {Outcomes?} {Evidence} from {Household}
    {Panel} {Data} in {Uganda}},
  journal = {WIDER Working Paper},
  number = {2022/141},
  date = {2022-11-01},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.35188/UNU-WIDER/2022/274-4},
  langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Pickbourn, Lynda, Raymond Caraher, and Léonce Ndikumana. 2022. “Does Project-Level Aid for Water and Sanitation Improve Child Health Outcomes? Evidence from Household Panel Data in Uganda.” WIDER Working Paper, November. https://doi.org/10.35188/UNU-WIDER/2022/274-4.