By Santosh
Kumar and Sebastian Vollmer, Health Economics, 22,
Issue 4, pages 410–427, April 2013 Article first published online: 22 MAR 2012
ABSTRACT: Almost nine million children
under 5 years of age die every year. Diarrhea is considered to be the second
leading cause of under-five mortality in developing countries. About one out of
five deaths is caused by diarrhea. In this paper, we use the newly available
data set District Level Household Survey 3 to quantify the impact of access to
improved sanitation on diarrheal morbidity for children less than 5 years of
age in India. Using propensity score matching, we find that access to improved
sanitation reduces the risk of contracting diarrhea by 2.2 percentage points.
There is considerable heterogeneity in the impacts of improved sanitation. We
find statistically insignificant treatment effects for children in low or
middle socioeconomic status households and for girls; however, boys and
children in high socioeconomic status households experienced economically
significant treatment effects. The magnitude of the treatment effect differs
largely by hygiene behavior. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
