Research >> Sanitation

Revisiting Open Defecation: Evidence from a Panel Survey in Rural North India, 2014–18
- Topics: Caste, Sanitation, Social inequality
Since October 2014, the Government of India has worked towards the goal of eliminating open defecation by 2019 through the Swachh Bharat Mission. In June 2014, the results of a survey of rural sanitation behaviour in North India were first...Read More..

Caste prejudice and infection: why a dangerous lack of hygiene persists in government hospitals
- Topics: Caste, Child health, Maternal health, Sanitation
In light of India’s continuing efforts to reduce maternal mortality and make childbirth safer for women, this article explores why government hospitals continue to be dangerously unhygienic, posing serious risk of infection to patients in maternity wards and labor rooms. ...Read More..

Measuring open defecation in India using survey questions: Evidence from a randomized survey experiment
- Topics: Sanitation
Objectives: To investigate differences in reported open defecation between a question about latrine use or open defecation for every household member and a household-level question. Setting: Rural India is home to most of the world’s open defecation. India’s Demographic and...Read More..

This paper argues that while the results of the WASH Benefits trials are important for understanding sanitation intervention and similar programmes, they do not imply that child health would not be improved by a large transition from open defecation to latrine...Read More..

Coercion, construction, and ’ODF paper pe’: The Swachh Bharat Mission, according to local government officials
- Topics: Government programs, Sanitation
This article draws upon 156 qualitative interviews conducted with the village and block-level officials in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh, as well as on new quantitative survey data, to answer these questions. It finds that local officials used...Read More..

Open defecation: Manual scavenging’s legacy in rural India
- Topics: Caste, Sanitation, Social inequality
Manual scavenging is caste-based work which has been handed down over generations, subjecting the same families and communities to deep humiliation, social exclusion, and poor health. This book chapter argues that same casteist attitudes that relegate Dalits to the filthy work...Read More..

Where Bharat Goes
- Topics: Caste, Child health, Sanitation, Social inequality
This book chapter discusses why rural Indians tend to reject affordable sanitation options, using which many poorer countries in the developing world have either completely eliminated or have successfully reduced open defecation. The practice of open defecation has negative externalities...Read More..

Changes in open defecation in rural north India: 2014 – 2018
- Topics: Sanitation
The paper reports on two surveys. The first survey, carried out by r.i.c.e., visited rural Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh in late 2018. It collected data on 9,812 people and interviewed 156 local government officials. The second survey,...Read More..

Child height in India: Facts and Interpretations from the NFHS-4, 2015-16
- Topics: Child health, Gender, Height, Maternal health, Sanitation, Social inequality
An analysis of child height-for-age using the newly released data from the National Family Health Survey-4 indicates that the average child height increased by about four-tenths of a height-for-age standard deviation between 2005 and 2015. Although important, this increase is...Read More..

The Government of India’s NFHS-4 offers the best new data on open defecation in rural India to be released in over a decade. Although open defecation has become less common than it was ten years ago, it is still highly...Read More..

Switching to sanitation: Understanding latrine adoption in a representative panel of rural Indian households
- Topics: Sanitation
Open defecation, which is still practiced by about a billion people worldwide, is one of the most examples of how place influences health in developing countries. Because of the negative healthy externalities of open defecation, eliminating it is a priority...Read More..

Understanding open defecation in rural India: Untouchability, pollution, and latrine pits
- Topics: Caste, Child health, Government programs, Sanitation, Social inequality
Open defecation in rural India presents a puzzle: India has far higher open defecation rates than other developing regions where people are poorer, literacy rates are lower, and water is more scarce. Because open defecation has terrible consequences for health,...Read More..

Anemia impairs physical and cognitive development in children and reduces human capital accumulation. The prior economics literature has focused on the role of inadequate nutrition in causing anemia. This paper is the first to show that sanitation, a public good,...Read More..

Place and child health : The interaction of population density and sanitation behavior in developing countries
- Topics: Child health, Demography, Sanitation
A long literature in demography has debated the importance of place for health, especially children’s health. In this study, we assess whether the importance of dense settlement for infant mortality and child height is moderated by exposure to local sanitation...Read More..

The puzzle of open defecation in rural India: Evidence from a novel measure of caste attitudes in a nationally-representative survey
- Topics: Caste, Sanitation, Social inequality
Uniquely widespread and persistent open defecation in rural India has emerged as an important policy challenge and puzzle about behavioral choice in economic development. One candidate explanation is the culture of purity and pollution that reinforces and has its origins...Read More..

Disease externalities and net nutrition: Evidence from changes in sanitation and child height in Cambodia, 2005–2010
- Topics: Child health, Sanitation
Child height is an important indicator of human capital and human development, in large part because early life health and net nutrition shape both child height and adult economic productivity and health. Between 2005 and 2010, the average height of...Read More..