IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rug/rugwps/25-1113.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Communal taps, a drop in the bucket?

Author

Listed:
  • Femke Maes

Abstract

Lack of access to safe drinking water remains one of the greatest challenges faced by rural regions in Sub-Saharan Africa. A potential remedy lies in the improvement of local water sources. This study investigates the impact of communal taps on household drinking water quality, childhood diarrhea incidence, and water disinfection practices in rural Western Uganda. Using a quasi-experimental design, 244 households and 169 children under five were observed, with data collected through household surveys and water samples before and after the deployment of communal taps. Households closer to the taps were compared to those farther away, with geographical distance as an exogenous determinant of tap water adoption. The findings indicate a clear improvement in microbiological water quality at home, especially for households that can supplement tap water with rainwater harvesting. No reductions in the incidence of diarrhea in children were observed. Benefits are limited by supply and demand barriers that restrict exclusive tap use. Additionally, households might substitute water disinfection at home with tap water, undermining the full potential of the intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Femke Maes, 2025. "Communal taps, a drop in the bucket?," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 25/1113, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    • Handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:25/1113
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_25_1113.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:rug:rugwps:25/1113. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Nathalie Verhaeghe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ferugbe.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.