Browsing by Subject "sanitation"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Dirty hands on troubled waters: Sanitation, access to water and child health in Ethiopia
    (Wiley, 2019-11) Manalew, Wondimu S.; Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    In this paper, we investigate the impact of access to drinking water sources and sanitation facilities on the incidence of diarrheal diseases among children below 5 years of age in Ethiopia using the propensity score matching technique with a polychotomous treatment variable. We find that among the water sources traditionally considered as improved, only water piped into dwelling, yard or plot leads to a large percentage point reduction in diarrhea incidence. The other water sources, generally believed as clean, are not effective in reducing diarrhea even compared with some of the unimproved water sources. We also find that some unimproved water sources and sanitation facilities are less inferior than they are believed to be. These results suggest that the traditional way of categorizing different types of improved and unimproved water sources and sanitation facilities into a dichotomous variable, “improved” or “unimproved”, could be misleading as it masks the heterogeneous effects of the water sources and the sanitation facilities.
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    Infrastructure, Separation, and Inequality: The Streets of Indianapolis Between 1890 and 1930
    (2008) Reichard, Ruth Diane; Coleman, Annie Gilbert; Barrows, Robert G.; Kelly, Jason M.
    Between 1890 and 1930 in the city of Indianapolis, people in charge made certain decisions regarding infrastructure—the character and condition of streets and sidewalks, the provision of sewer services and garbage collection, the location of the city’s dump, and the placement of the city’s sewage treatment plant—that resulted in long-term health and safety consequences. In Indianapolis, as in most modern American cities, some neighborhoods are less healthy for their inhabitants than others. The least healthy neighborhoods—those with the highest rates of cancer, for example—are situated on the city’s southwest side. The southwest side of Indianapolis is also the location of the landfill, the sewage treatment plant, and much heavy industry. The entire city is at the mercy of an ill-designed sewer system, a system that taxpayers are spending millions annually to repair. The years from 1890 to 1930 saw the genesis of this state of affairs. In the city of Indianapolis since 1890, infrastructure has separated people from nature and from each other on two levels: its operational level, wherein it was an objective entity that performed according to its design, and its subjective level, where it operated as a social and hygienic barrier. Streets, curbs, sewers, and sidewalks are useful and necessary elements of public health and safety. We both want and need these elements to ensure our separation from things that are dangerous, such as speeding cars and contaminated water. When government officials exercise power to declare what parts of the city street are accessible to whom, or which neighborhoods will have a wastewater treatment plant, a landfill, or heavy industry nearby, infrastructure can work to separate people.