Year: 2012
Type: preprint
Abstract: Almost nine million children under five years of age die every year. Diarrhea is considered to be the second leading cause of under- five mortality in developing countries. About one out of five deaths is caused by diarrhea. In this paper, we use the newly available data set DLHS-3 to quantify the impact of access to improved sanitation on diarrheal morbidity for children under five years of age in India. Using Propensity Score Matching (PSM), we fi nd that access to improved sanitation reduces the risk of contracting diarrhea by 2.2 percentage points. There is considerable heterogeneity in the impacts of improved sanitation. We neither fi nd statistically signi cant treatment effects for children in low or middle socioeconomic status (SES) households nor for girls, however, boys and children in high (SES) households experienced economically signifi cant treatment effects. The magnitude of the treatment effect also differs largely by behavior.
Authors: Santosh Kumar, Sebastian Vollmer
Institution: Harvard University
Language: English
Subfield: Nutrition and Dietetics
Field: Nursing
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Harvard University
OpenAlex ID: W1652183391