Community matters: heterogenous impacts of a sanitation intervention

Laura Abramovsky, Britta Augsburg, Melanie Lührmann, Francisco Oteiza () and Juan Pablo Rud ()
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Francisco Oteiza: Institute for Fiscal Studies and EDePo @ Institute for Fiscal Studies
Juan Pablo Rud: Institute for Fiscal Studies and Royal Holloway, University of London

No W19/11, IFS Working Papers from Institute for Fiscal Studies

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. Page updated 12/02/2020 - A previous version of this paper was uploaded here.

Keywords: External validity; Heterogeneous Treatment Effects; Sanitation; Information; Cluster- Randomized Control Trial. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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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: Heterogeneous Impacts of a Sanitation Intervention (2020)
Working Paper: Community matters: heterogenous impacts of a sanitation intervention (2018)
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