Improved access to safe water: effects on adult health and time allocation in rural Zambia

Yasuharu Shimamura, Satoshi Shimizutani, Shimpei Taguchi and Hiroyuki Yamada

Journal of Development Effectiveness, 2025, vol. 17, issue 3, 362-381

Abstract: This paper examines the short-term impact of improved access to safe water on adult health and time allocation at newly constructed boreholes in rural Zambia. We employ a difference-in-differences estimation using a dataset collected under a quasi-experimental setting. We observe that improved access to safe water reduced diarrhoeal incidence among working-age adults and the resulting decrease in the number of days during which they could not perform their regular activities due to diarrhoea, although the economic benefits resulting from health impacts were very limited. With respect to time allocation, we find that improved access to safe water reduced time spent on water-related household chores of female adults. We do not observe any significant increase in time spent on income-generating activities. Instead, the time-gain benefit for working-age adults can be found in leisure time, particularly among females who live near the new boreholes.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19439342.2025.2517030 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Improved Access to Safe Water: Effects on Adult Health and Time Reallocation in Rural Zambia (2020)
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:taf:jdevef:v:17:y:2025:i:3:p:362-381

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJDE20

DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2025.2517030

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Effectiveness is currently edited by Howard White

More articles in Journal of Development Effectiveness from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().