ArticleDemography2019
Water, Sanitation, and Child Health: Evidence From Subnational Panel Data in 59 Countries.
Article in Demography, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 116 citations in OpenAlex.
- Water, sanitation and hygiene interventions and the prevention and treatment of childhood acute malnutrition: A systematic review.Maternal & child nutrition · 2022Pooled it
- A Systematic Review and Appraisal of Epidemiological Studies on Household Fuel Use and Its Health Effects Using Demographic and Health Surveys.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- A cluster randomized controlled trial of a community-based initiative to reduce stunting in rural Indonesia.Maternal & child nutrition · 2024Trial
- The association between dairy cattle ownership and nutritional status of children under five in rural Bangladesh: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Effects of mothers' water, sanitation and hygiene habits on diarrhoea and malnutrition among children under 5 years in Nepal.BMJ public health · 2025Article
- Intergenerational Clustering of Under-Five Mortality: A Cohort Perspective in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.Demography · 2024Article
- The role of national nutrition programs on stunting reduction in Rwanda using machine learning classifiers: a retrospective study.BMC nutrition · 2024Article
- Poor housing quality and the health of newborns and young children.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Multi-level factors associated with utilization of water, sanitation and hygiene services by mothers in Nepal.PloS one · 2024Article
- Article
- Growth in milk consumption and reductions in child stunting: Historical evidence from cross-country panel data.Food policy · 2023Article
- Spatiotemporal analysis of the effect of global development indicators on child mortality.International journal of health geographics · 2023Article
- The Interaction Effect of Birth Spacing and Maternal Healthcare Services on Child Mortality in Pakistan.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Article
- Growth and growth trajectory among infants in early life: contributions of food insecurity and water insecurity in rural Zimbabwe.BMJ nutrition, prevention & health · 2022Article
- Mothers' Social Status and Children's Health: Evidence From Joint Households in Rural India.Demography · 2022Article
- Household Microenvironment and Under-Fives Health Outcomes in Uganda: Focusing on Multidimensional Energy Poverty and Women Empowerment Indices.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Article
- Socio-demographic and environmental risk factors associated with multiple under-five child loss among mothers in Bangladesh.BMC pediatrics · 2021Article
- Clean water, sanitation and under-five children diarrhea incidence: Empirical evidence from the South Africa's General Household Survey.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) investments are widely seen as essential for improving health in early childhood. However, the experimental literature on WASH interventions identifies inconsistent impacts on child health outcomes, with relatively robust impacts on diarrhea and other symptoms of infection but weak and varying impacts on child nutrition. In contrast, observational research exploiting cross-sectional variation in water and sanitation access is much more sanguine, finding strong associations with diarrhea prevalence, mortality, and stunting. In practice, both literatures suffer from significant methodological limitations. Experimental WASH evaluations are often subject to poor compliance, rural bias, and short duration of exposure, while cross-sectional observational evidence may be highly vulnerable to omitted variables bias. To overcome some of the limitations of both literatures, we construct a panel of 442 subnational regions in 59 countries with multiple Demographic Health Surveys. Using this large subnational panel, we implement difference-in-difference regressions that allow us to examine whether longer-term changes in water and sanitation at the subnational level predict improvements in child morbidity, mortality, and nutrition. We find results that are partially consistent with both literatures. Improved water access is statistically insignificantly associated with most outcomes, although water piped into the home predicts reductions in child stunting. Improvements in sanitation predict large reductions in diarrhea prevalence and child mortality but are not associated with changes in stunting or wasting. We estimate that sanitation improvements can account for just under 10 % of the decline in child mortality from 1990 to 2015.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.