Research >> Sanitation

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..