Water Demand by Unconnected Urban Households in Rwanda

Claudine Uwera and Jesper Stage
Additional contact information
Claudine Uwera: Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, PO Box 640, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden;

Water Economics and Policy (WEP), 2015, vol. 01, issue 01, 1-28

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze water demand by urban households in Rwanda who currently lack a piped connection into their home. The analysis uses data from a cross-sectional survey. The results show that public taps are the most widely used water source and that the demand for water from this source is more inelastic than that for water from other water sources. Although some households combine different sources of water, the majority in the sample uses only one source. We use the full household income, including the value of the household's time, and obtain results which indicate income elasticities higher than those obtained using monetary income only. The full cost associated with alternative water sources (including the opportunity cost of the time used) is shown to be important for determining the choice of source — something which has been overlooked in most previous studies.

Keywords: Coping sources of water; full income; unconnected households; water demand; elasticity; urban districts; Rwanda (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2382624X14500027
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:wsi:wepxxx:v:01:y:2015:i:01:n:s2382624x14500027

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S2382624X14500027

Access Statistics for this article

Water Economics and Policy (WEP) is currently edited by Ariel Dinar

More articles in Water Economics and Policy (WEP) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().