Community Matters: Heterogeneous Impacts of a Sanitation Intervention

Laura Abramovsky, Britta Augsburg, Melanie L\"uhrmann, Francisco Oteiza and Juan Pablo Rud
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Melanie L\"uhrmann: Royal Holloway Department of Economics
Francisco Oteiza: UCL Institute of Education
Juan Pablo Rud: Royal Holloway Department of Economics
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Melanie Lührmann

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Abstract: We study the effectiveness of a community-level information intervention aimed at improving sanitation using a cluster-randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Nigerian communities. The intervention, Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), is currently part of national sanitation policy in more than 25 countries. While average impacts are exiguous almost three years after implementation at scale, the results hide important heterogeneity: the intervention has strong and lasting effects on sanitation practices in poorer communities. These are realized through increased sanitation investments. We show that community wealth, widely available in secondary data, is a key statistic for effective intervention targeting. Using data from five other similar randomized interventions in various contexts, we find that community-level wealth heterogeneity can rationalize the wide range of impact estimates in the literature. This exercise provides plausible external validity to our findings, with implications for intervention scale-up. JEL Codes: O12, I12, I15, I18.

Date: 2019-01, Revised 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-exp and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Community matters: Heterogeneous impacts of a sanitation intervention (2023)
Working Paper: Community Matters: Heterogeneous Impacts of a Sanitation Intervention (2023)
Working Paper: Community matters: heterogenous impacts of a sanitation intervention (2019)
Working Paper: Community matters: heterogenous impacts of a sanitation intervention (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:1901.03544

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