Study of the Distributional Performance of Piped Water Consumption Subsidies in 10 Developing Countries

Laura Abramovsky, Luis Andres, George Joseph, Juan Pablo Rud, German Eduardo Sember and Michael David Thibert

No 9245, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on how effectively piped water consumption subsidies are targeting poor households in 10 low- and middle-income countries around the world. The results suggest that, in these countries, existing tariff structures fall short of recovering the costs of service provision, and the resulting subsidies largely fail to achieve their goal of improving the accessibility and affordability of piped water for poor households. Instead, the majority of subsidies in all 10 countries are captured by the richest households. This is in part because the most vulnerable population segments typically face challenges in accessing and connecting to piped water services. The paper also reveals shortcomings in the design of the subsidies, which are conditional on poor households being connected to a piped network.

Keywords: Hydrology; Labor&Employment Law; Small Private Water Supply Providers; Sanitary Environmental Engineering; Health and Sanitation; Water Supply and Sanitation Economics; Town Water Supply and Sanitation; Engineering; Water and Human Health; Environmental Engineering; Sanitation and Sewerage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-sea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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