IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/90420.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sanitation and Hygiene

Author

Listed:
  • Borooah, Vani

Abstract

Using data from the Indian Human Development Survey, this chapter examines both toilet possession and personal hygiene in India. It shows that the strongest influences on households in India having a toilet were their standard of living, the highest educational level of adults in the households, and whether or not they possesses ancillary amenities like a separate kitchen for cooking, a pucca roof and floor, and water supply within the dwelling or its compound. However, in so doing, it also shows that whether households had toilets depended not just on household-specific factors but also on the social environment within which the households were located. More specifically, ceteris paribus households in more developed villages would be more likely to have a toilet than those in less developed villages. The chapter rejects the nihilism of the idea, put forward in several academic papers , that the problem of open defecation in India is an intractable one because caste, ritual pollution, and untouchability instil in rural Indians a preference for open spaces.

Suggested Citation

  • Borooah, Vani, 2018. "Sanitation and Hygiene," MPRA Paper 90420, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:90420
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/90420/1/MPRA_paper_90420.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jenkins, Marion W. & Curtis, Val, 2005. "Achieving the 'good life': Why some people want latrines in rural Benin," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(11), pages 2446-2459, December.
    2. Bhalotra, Sonia & Valente, Christine & van Soest, Arthur, 2010. "The puzzle of Muslim advantage in child survival in India," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 191-204, March.
    3. Dean Spears, 2012. "How much international variation in child height can sanitation explain?," Working Papers 1436, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    4. Borooah, Vani K., 2004. "On the incidence of diarrhoea among young Indian children," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 119-138, March.
    5. Ken McCormick, 1983. "Duesenberry and Veblen: The Demonstration Effect Revisited," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 1125-1129, December.
    6. Roger Mason, 2000. "The Social Significance of Consumption: James Duesenberry’s Contribution to Consumer Theory," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 553-572, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Diane Coffey & Ashwini Deshpande & Jeffrey Hammer & Dean Spears, 2019. "Local Social Inequality, Economic Inequality, and Disparities in Child Height in India," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(4), pages 1427-1452, August.
    2. YuJung Julia Lee & Tiffany Radcliff, 2021. "Community interactions and sanitation use by the urban poor: Survey evidence from India’s slums," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(4), pages 715-732, March.
    3. Alacevich, Caterina & Tarozzi, Alessandro, 2017. "Child height and intergenerational transmission of health: Evidence from ethnic Indians in England," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 65-84.
    4. Shakya, Holly B. & Christakis, Nicholas A. & Fowler, James H., 2015. "Social network predictors of latrine ownership," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 129-138.
    5. Anurag N. Banerjee & Nilanjan Banik & Ashvika Dalmia, 2017. "Demand for household sanitation in India using NFHS-3 data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 307-327, August.
    6. Seema Jayachandran & Rohini Pande, 2015. "Why Are Indian Children So Short?," NBER Working Papers 21036, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Nie, Peng & Rammohan, Anu & Gwozdz, Wencke & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2016. "Developments in Undernutrition in Indian Children Under Five: A Decompositional Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 9893, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Tazeb Bisset & Dagmawe Tenaw, 2022. "Keeping up with the Joneses: macro-evidence on the relevance of Duesenberry’s relative income hypothesis in Ethiopia," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 24(2), pages 549-564, December.
    9. Crocker, Jonny & Shields, Katherine F. & Venkataramanan, Vidya & Saywell, Darren & Bartram, Jamie, 2016. "Building capacity for water, sanitation, and hygiene programming: Training evaluation theory applied to CLTS management training in Kenya," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 66-76.
    10. repec:lic:licosd:39417 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Antinyan, Armenak & Horváth, Gergely & Jia, Mofei, 2019. "Social status competition and the impact of income inequality in evolving social networks: An agent-based model," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 53-69.
    12. Spears, Dean, 2020. "Exposure to open defecation can account for the Indian enigma of child height," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    13. Antinyan, Armenak & Baghdasaryan, Vardan & Grigoryan, Aleksandr, 2022. "Charitable giving, social capital, and positional concerns," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    14. Vani Kant Borooah, 2022. "Development, Sanitation and Personal Hygiene in India," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(1), pages 103-123, February.
    15. Peng Nie & Anu Rammohan & Wencke Gwozdz & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2019. "Changes in Child Nutrition in India: A Decomposition Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-22, May.
    16. Derek Headey & David Stifel & Liangzhi You & Zhe Guo, 2018. "Remoteness, urbanization, and child nutrition in sub‐Saharan Africa," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(6), pages 765-775, November.
    17. Sonia Bhalotra & Abhishek Chakravarty & Dilip Mookherjee & Francisco J. Pino, 2019. "Property Rights and Gender Bias: Evidence from Land Reform in West Bengal," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 205-237, April.
    18. Kalra, Aarushi, 2021. "A 'Ghetto' of One's Own: Communal Violence, Residential Segregation and Group Education Outcomes in India," SocArXiv rzjct, Center for Open Science.
    19. Lara Cockx & Nathalie Francken, 2016. "Evolution and impact of EU aid for food and nutrition security: a review," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven 540512, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    20. Evan Borkum & Dana Rotz & Anu Rangarajan & Swetha Sridharan & Sukhmani Sethi & Mercy Manoranjini & Lakshmi Ramakrishnan & Lalit Dandona & Rakhi Dandona & Priyanka S. Kochar & G. Anil Kumar & Priyanka , "undated". "Midline Findings from the Evaluation of the Ananya Program in Bihar," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 74ef56ababd9412b82ef906fc, Mathematica Policy Research.
    21. Eric Nazindigouba KERE & Johanna CHOUMERT & Amandine Loyal LARÉ-DONDARINI, 2014. "The impact of water and sanitation access on housing values: The case of Dapaong, Togo," Working Papers 201403, CERDI.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sanitation; Defecation; Toilets; Handwashing; Hygiene;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:90420. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.