A Drop in the Bucket

The lack of improved water and sanitary infrastructure still kills many people in developing countries each year. This book gives useful insights into how development projects have an impact in practice and why there is a possibility that projects fail to have positive outcomes. In this book, the national water and sanitation program in rural Benin is analyzed. A difference-in-difference analysis is combined with a phasing-in approach to a sample of 200 villages in the departments of Mono, Couffo and Collines. The water program installs modern water sources as public pumps or standpipes in the villages in 2009 and afterwards. An additional household intervention for water transport and storage containers was design and is analyzed in a randomized control trail. The main outcome variables analyzed are water quality at the water source and in the household, usage rates, time savings and distance reduction because of the installation of a new water point. Further, it is analyzed why the coverage rate of sanitary facilities remain low in the rural areas of Benin. “This book significantly advances our understanding of whether projects that extent rural water supply and sanitation services work or not. Using state-of-the art techniques it demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of such interventions in Benin and it is able to shed light on how to improve the design of such projects.” Prof. Stephan Klasen, PhD “How can access to water be improved for the rural poor? To answer this question, the author combines sound econometric techniques with on-the-ground field work which makes this an insightful piece of work.” Prof. Dr. Isabel Günther