IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uct/uconnp/2019-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Piped Water at Home on Childhood Overweight Rate. Experimental Evidence from Urban Morocco

Author

Listed:
  • Patricia I. Ritter

    (University of Connecticut)

Abstract

Obesity is a global epidemic costing billions of dollars and millions of deaths. The most cost-effective interventions are those that target children, aiming to prevent obesity rather than to reverse it later in life. Roughly 79% of overweight children under five live in middle-income countries, where only about half of the households have access to piped water at home. This study finds that access to piped water at home reduces children’s overweight rate in the city of Tangiers. Back-of-envelope calculations suggest that this benefit alone does not render this type of intervention cost-effective, but adds significantly to other potential benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • Patricia I. Ritter, 2019. "The Effect of Piped Water at Home on Childhood Overweight Rate. Experimental Evidence from Urban Morocco," Working papers 2019-02, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2021.
    • Handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2019-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2019-02R4.pdf
    File Function: Full text (revised version)
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2019-02.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elbel, B. & Mijanovich, T. & Abrams, C. & Cantor, J. & Dunn, L. & Nonas, C. & Cappola, K. & Onufrak, S. & Park, S., 2015. "A water availability intervention in New York City public schools: Influence on youths' water and milk behaviors," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(2), pages 365-372.
    2. Cawley, John, 2015. "An economy of scales: A selective review of obesity's economic causes, consequences, and solutions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 244-268.
    3. Daniel Bennett, 2012. "Does Clean Water Make You Dirty?: Water Supply and Sanitation in the Philippines," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 47(1), pages 146-173.
    4. Sebastian Galiani & Paul Gertler & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2005. "Water for Life: The Impact of the Privatization of Water Services on Child Mortality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 83-120, February.
    5. Michael Kremer & Jessica Leino & Edward Miguel & Alix Peterson Zwane, 2011. "Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 145-205.
    6. Shimshack, Jay P. & Ward, Michael B. & Beatty, Timothy K.M., 2007. "Mercury advisories: Information, education, and fish consumption," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 158-179, March.
    7. Patricia I. Ritter, 2018. "Soda Consumption in the Tropics: The Trade-Off between Obesity and Diarrhea in Developing Countries," Working papers 2018-16, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2020.
    8. Joshua Graff Zivin & Matthew Neidell & Wolfram Schlenker, 2011. "Water Quality Violations and Avoidance Behavior: Evidence from Bottled Water Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 448-453, May.
    9. Gamper-Rabindran, Shanti & Khan, Shakeeb & Timmins, Christopher, 2010. "The impact of piped water provision on infant mortality in Brazil: A quantile panel data approach," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 188-200, July.
    10. Florencia Devoto & Esther Duflo & Pascaline Dupas & William Parienté & Vincent Pons, 2012. "Happiness on Tap: Piped Water Adoption in Urban Morocco," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 68-99, November.
    11. Wendt, Minh & Todd, Jessica E., 2011. "The Effect of Food and Beverage Prices on Children's Weights," Economic Research Report 134705, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    12. Jay Shimshack, 2004. "Are Mercury Advisories Effective? Inofrmation, Education, and Fish Consumption," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0423, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    13. Pinar Keskin & Gauri Kartini Shastry & Helen Willis, 2017. "Water Quality Awareness and Breastfeeding: Evidence of Health Behavior Change in Bangladesh," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(2), pages 265-280, May.
    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. Sonia R. Bhalotra & Alberto Diaz-Cayeros & Grant Miller & Alfonso Miranda & Atheendar S. Venkataramani, 2017. "Urban Water Disinfection and Mortality Decline in Developing Countries," Working Papers 467, Center for Global Development.
    2. Patricia I. Ritter, 2024. "The unintended effect of piped water at home on childhood overweight rate: experimental evidence from urban Morocco," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 1089-1126, September.
    3. Nava Ashraf & Edward Glaeser & Abraham Holland & Bryce Millett Steinberg, 2021. "Water, Health and Wealth: The Impact of Piped Water Outages on Disease Prevalence and Financial Transactions in Zambia," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(351), pages 755-781, July.
    4. Zhang, Jing & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2016. "The long-run effects of treated water on education: The rural drinking water program in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 1-15.
    5. Kosec, Katrina, 2014. "The child health implications of privatizing africa's urban water supply," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 1-19.
    6. Li, Yuanzhe & Xi, Tianyang & Zhou, Li-An, 2024. "Drinking water facilities and inclusive development: Evidence from Rural China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    7. Kesztenbaum, Lionel & Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, 2017. "Sewers’ diffusion and the decline of mortality: The case of Paris, 1880–1914," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 174-186.
    8. Kosec, Katrina, 2013. "The child health implications of privatizing Africa’s urban water supply:," IFPRI discussion papers 1269, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. Phuong Thu Nguyen & Preety Srivastava & Longfeng Ye & Jonathan Boymal, 2022. "Housing and occupant health: Findings from Vietnam," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1297-1321, December.
    10. Brandon Cunningham & Jacob LaRiviere & Casey J. Wichman, 2021. "Clustered into control: Heterogeneous causal impacts of water infrastructure failure," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 1417-1439, July.
    11. Garg, Teevrat & Hamilton, Stuart E. & Hochard, Jacob P. & Kresch, Evan Plous & Talbot, John, 2018. "(Not so) gently down the stream: River pollution and health in Indonesia," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 35-53.
    12. Janet Currie & Joshua Graff Zivin & Katherine Meckel & Matthew Neidell & Wolfram Schlenker, 2013. "Something in the water: contaminated drinking water and infant health," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(3), pages 791-810, August.
    13. Nava Ashraf & Edward Glaeser & Abraham Holland & Bryce Millett Steinberg, 2017. "Water, Health and Wealth," NBER Working Papers 23807, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Meeks, Robyn, 2018. "Property Rights and Water Access: Evidence from Land Titling in Rural Peru," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 345-357.
    15. Yasuharu SHIMAMURA & Hiroshi NISHINO & Hirofumi TSURUTA & Keitaro AOYAGI, 2017. "Effect of Groundwater Development Project on Diarrhea Incidence in Rural Zambia," GSICS Working Paper Series 31, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University.
    16. Joshua Graff Zivin & Matthew Neidell, 2013. "Environment, Health, and Human Capital," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 689-730, September.
    17. Douglas H. Wrenn & H. Allen Klaiber & Edward C. Jaenicke, 2016. "Unconventional Shale Gas Development, Risk Perceptions, and Averting Behavior: Evidence from Bottled Water Purchases," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(4), pages 779-817.
    18. Schady, Norbert, 2015. "Does Access to Better Water and Sanitation Infrastructure Improve Child Outcomes? Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7369, Inter-American Development Bank.
    19. Antman, Francisca M. & Flynn, James M., 2024. "When beer is safer than water: Beer availability and mortality from waterborne illnesses," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    20. Tsukada, Rachel & Dupuy, Arnaud, 2016. "The impact of household labor-saving technologies along the family life cycle," MERIT Working Papers 2016-047, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    obesity; piped water; childhood; developing countries;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    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:uct:uconnp:2019-02. 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: Mark McConnel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuctus.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.