The Child Health Implications of Privatizing Africa’s Urban Water Supply

The Child Health Implications of Privatizing Africa’s Urban Water Supply
Author: Katrina Kosec
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 48
Release: 2013-05-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Identifying policies which can improve water sector management is critically important given the global burden of water-related disease. Each year, 1 in 10 child deaths—roughly 800,000 in total—is the direct result of diarrhea. Can private-sector participation (PSP) in the urban piped water sector improve child health? The author uses child-level data from 39 African countries during 1986–2010 to show that introducing PSP decreases diarrhea among urban dwelling children under five years of age by 5.6 percentage points, or 35 percent of its mean prevalence. PSP also leads to greater reliance on piped water. To attribute causality, the author exploits time variation in the private water market share controlled by African countries’ former colonizers. A placebo analysis reveals that PSP does not affect symptoms of respiratory illness in the same children, nor does it affect a rural control group unaffected by PSP.

The Child Health Implications of Privatizing the Urban Water Supply in Africa

The Child Health Implications of Privatizing the Urban Water Supply in Africa
Author: Katrina Kosec
Publisher:
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN:

Can private sector participation (PSP) in the urban piped water sector improve child health? Allowing the private sector to provide basic infrastructure such as piped water is politically controversial, with some arguing that the private sector is more efficient and will improve access and quality, and others arguing that access and quality will suffer. This paper uses child-level data from 39 African countries during 1986-2010 to shed light on this question. A fixed effects analysis suggests that the introduction of PSP decreases diarrhea among under-five children by between 2.2 and 2.6 percentage points, or 14-16%. An instrumental variables analysis that uses variation in the share of the world water market controlled by former colonizing countries suggests that the effects are twice as large. The difference between the OLS and the IV results can be explained by the fact that PSP is more likely when the water sector is distressed and causing health problems. Importantly, PSP appears to benefit the health of children from the poorest households the most. PSP in water also leads to higher rates of reliance on piped water as the primary water source, which is a likely channel explaining child health improvements.

The Age of Commodity

The Age of Commodity
Author: David McDonald
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2012-06-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1136555048

As globalization and market liberalization march forward unabated the global commons continue to be commodified and privatized at a rapid pace. In this global process, the ownership, sale and supply of water is increasingly a flashpoint for debates and conflict over privatization, and nowhere is the debate more advanced or acute than in Southern Africa. The Age of Commodity provides an overview of the debates over water in the region including a conceptual overview of water 'privatization', how it relates to human rights, macro-economic policy and GATS. The book then presents case studies of important water privatization initiatives in the region, drawing out crucial themes common to water privatization debates around the world including corruption, gender equity and donor conditionalities. This book is powerful and necessary reading in our new age of commodity.

The Welfare Effects of Private Sector Participation in Guinea's Urban Water Supply

The Welfare Effects of Private Sector Participation in Guinea's Urban Water Supply
Author: George Clarke
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 46
Release: 2000
Genre: Agua potable - Guinea
ISBN:

Private sector participation in Guinea's urban water sector has benefited consumers, the government, and, to a lesser extent, the new foreign owners. Performance will improve further when the government starts paying its own water bill on time and when the legislature authorizes the collection of unpaid bills from private consumers.

The Impact of Alternative Input Subsidy Exit Strategies on Malawi’s Maize Commodity Market

The Impact of Alternative Input Subsidy Exit Strategies on Malawi’s Maize Commodity Market
Author: Mariam A. T. J. Mapila
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2013-07-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

This study has been conducted in order to generate evidence of the visibility of exit from farm input subsidies in an African context. The study simulates the impact of alternative exit strategies from Malawi’s farm input subsidy program on maize markets. The simulation is conducted using a multiequation partial equilibrium model of the national maize market, which is sequentially linked via a price-linkage equation to local rural maize markets. The model accounts for market imperfections prevailing in the country that arise from government price interventions. Findings show that some alternative exit strategies have negative and sustained impacts on maize yields, production, and acreage allocated to maize over the simulation period. Market prices rise steadily as a result of the implementation of different exit strategies. Despite higher maize prices, domestic maize consumption remains fairly stable, with a slow but increasing trend over the simulation period. Results further suggest that exit strategies that are coupled with improvements in agricultural extension services have the potential to offset the negative impacts of the removal or scaling down of agricultural input subsidies. The study findings demonstrate the difficulty of feasibly removing farm input subsidies. Study recommendations are therefore relevant for policymakers and development partners debating removal or implementation of farm input subsidies.

The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy

The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy
Author: Ken Conca
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 713
Release: 2018
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199335087

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.

Handbook of Global Urban Health

Handbook of Global Urban Health
Author: Igor Vojnovic
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 826
Release: 2019-05-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315465442

Through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives, and with an emphasis on exploring patterns as well as distinct and unique conditions across the globe, this collection examines advanced and cutting-edge theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the health of urban populations. Despite the growing interest in global urban health, there are limited resources available that provide an extensive and advanced exploration into the health of urban populations in a transnational context. This volume offers a high-quality and comprehensive examination of global urban health issues by leading urban health scholars from around the world. The book brings together a multi-disciplinary perspective on urban health, with chapter contributions emphasizing disciplines in the social sciences, construction sciences and medical sciences. The co-editors of the collection come from a number of different disciplinary backgrounds that have been at the forefront of urban health research, including public health, epidemiology, geography, city planning and urban design. The book is intended to be a reference in global urban health for research libraries and faculty collections. It will also be appropriate as a text for university class adoption in upper-division under-graduate courses and above. The proposed volume is extensive and offers enough breadth and depth to enable it to be used for courses emphasizing a U.S., or wider Western perspective, as well as courses on urban health emphasizing a global context.

Privatizing Water

Privatizing Water
Author: Karen Bakker
Publisher: NUS Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9971695693

Water supply privatization was emblematic of the nonliberal turn in development policy in the 1990s. Proponents argue that the private sector could provide better services at lower costs than governments; opponents questioned the risks involved in delegating control over a life-sustaining resource to for-profit companies. Private-sector activity was most concentrated - and contested - in large cities in developing countries, where widespread lack of access to networked water supplies was characterized as a global crisis. Drawing extensively on information gathered in Indonesia, Latin America and Africa, Privatizing Water focuses on three questions: Why did privatization emerge as a preferred alternative for managing urban water supply? Can privatization fulfill its proponents' expectations, particularly with respect to water supply to the urban poor? And, given the apparent shortcomings of both privatization and conventional approaches to government provision, what are the alternatives? In answering these questions, Bakker engages with broader debates over the role of the private sector in development, the role of urban communities in the provision of "public" services, and the governance of public goods. Critically examining a range of issues - including the transnational struggle over the human right to water, the "commons" as a water-supply-management strategy, and the environmental dimensions of water privatization - Privatizing Water is a balanced exploration of a critical issue that affects billions of people around the world.

An Ex Ante Analysis of the Impact and Cost-Effectiveness of Biofortified High-Provitamin A and High-Iron Banana in Uganda

An Ex Ante Analysis of the Impact and Cost-Effectiveness of Biofortified High-Provitamin A and High-Iron Banana in Uganda
Author: John L. Fiedler
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2013-07-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Uganda has made notable progress in reducing micronutrient deficiencies in recent years, but the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and anemia among children under 5 remain unacceptably high. According to World Health Organization criteria, VAD remains a public health problem in Uganda, and anemia is a severe problem. In this paper we explore the potential contribution to reducing both of these deficiencies using a genetically modified, high–provitamin A and high-iron banana (HPVAHIB) that is currently being developed. We present an ex ante analysis of the costs and nutritional benefits of HPVAHIB. Using the Ugandan National Household Survey of 2005/06, we analyzed the production and consumption patterns of highland cooking banana (nakinyika) and sweet banana (sukalindizi). Informed by the empirical findings, we developed geographically differentiated adoption, production, consumption, and diffusion patterns for several types of HPVAHIB. Based on households’ reported quantities of each type of banana currently consumed, we estimated the number of people consuming each banana and the quantities they consume, and then simulated the additional intakes of vitamin A and iron and estimated the number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) saved attributable to each. Combining the health impacts with the estimated costs of the project, three impact measures of the HPVAHIB are developed: the cost per DALY saved, the benefit–cost ratio, and the internal rate of return. Eighteen scenarios are estimated. The base scenario, which includes only the biofortification of cooking banana with provitamin A at a level equal to 400 percent its intrinsic provitamin A content, estimates that the net present cost per DALY saved of HPVAHIB is US$62, its benefit–cost ratio is 16, and its internal rate of return is 31 percent. According to criteria established by the World Health Organization and the World Bank, the HPVAHIB project is a “very cost-effective” health intervention.

The Logic of Adaptive Sequential Experimentation in Policy Design

The Logic of Adaptive Sequential Experimentation in Policy Design
Author: Haipeng Xing
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 28
Release: 2013-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Inspired by the wide adoption of rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in medical research, economists and other social scientists have increasingly used RCTs in their research. As researchers pick up projects amenable to the RCT methodology, they likely leave out important questions to which RCTs cannot be directly applied. As a result, RCTs have been criticized for the proclivity of addressing trivial questions. As a matter of fact, in medical research RCTs are an integral part of adaptive sequential experiment design—a few steps must be taken to screen out drugs that have toxins and strong side effects before running any RCTs on humans. In this paper, we argue that economists can learn a great deal from the design principles implemented in medical research. We develop a theoretical model to show the logic of adaptive sequential experiment design in the presence of uncertainty over negative effects and discuss how to choose samples in a population to minimize the experiment cost. We also point out the applications of our proposed framework in the economic domain, such as economic reforms and new product design.