WASH for child health: Some evidence in support of public intervention in the Philippines

Joseph Capuno, Carlos Antonio Tan and Xylee Javier
Additional contact information
Carlos Antonio Tan: School of Economics, University of the Philippines Diliman
Xylee Javier: School of Economics, University of the Philippines Diliman

No 201611, UP School of Economics Discussion Papers from University of the Philippines School of Economics

Abstract: Like in many developing countries, diarrheal diseases remain a top cause of child mortality and morbidity in the Philippines. Partly to address this problem, the government has undertaken programs to expand access to safe water and sanitation facilities, especially among poor households. To assess the impact of such interventions on child health, we apply propensity score matching technique on the pooled data from the last five rounds of the National Demographic and Health Survey. We find that improved water and improved sanitation each reduced the probability of child diarrhea in 1993-2008 by around two percentage points. In 2013, improved water reduced the probability by about 7 percentage points, while improved sanitation do not seem to have statistically significant effect. These results lend support to the government’s programs to widen access to safe water and sanitation facilities as measures to improve child health.

Keywords: Water and sanitation; child health; Philippines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 O53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-hea and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as UPSE Discussion Paper No. 2016-11, September 2016

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.upd.edu.ph/dp/index.php/dp/article/view/1498 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:phs:dpaper:201611

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UP School of Economics Discussion Papers from University of the Philippines School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by RT Campos ().