Water For Life: The impact of the privatization of water services on child mortality
Open accessAbstract
While most countries are committed to increasing access to safe water and thereby reducing child mortality, there is little consensus on how to actually improve water services. One important proposal under discussion is whether to privatize water provision. In the 1990s Argentina embarked on one of the largest privatization campaigns in the world, including the privatization of local water companies covering approximately 30 percent of the country’s municipalities. Using the variation in ownership of water provision across time and space generated by the privatization process, we find that child mortality fell 8 percent in the areas that privatized their water services and that the effect was largest (26 percent) in the poorest areas. We check the robustness of these estimates using cause‐specific mortality. While privatization is associated with significant reductions in deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases, it is uncorrelated with deaths from causes unrelated to water conditions.
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Galiani 2005 was excluded because it had an ineligible setting (not specific to slum settings, city-wide intervention and outcomes).
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From Slum upgrading strategies involving physical environment and infrastructure interventions and their effects on health and socio-economic outcomes (2013) · cites this paper as Galiani 2005
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Turley, R., Saith, R., Bhan, N., Rehfuess, E., & Carter, B. (2013) · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · doi:10.1002/14651858.cd010067.pub2 · Cited by 153 · see citing works
Water expansions in Shantytowns: health and savings
GALIANI, S., GONZALEZ‐ROZADA, M., & SCHARGRODSKY, E. (2009) · Economica · doi:10.1111/j.1468-0335.2008.00719.x · Cited by 59 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Galiani, S., Gertler, P., & Schargrodsky, E.
- Affiliations
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (AR)
- Venue
- Journal of Political Economy
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2005-02
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 83-120
- ISSN
- 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-534X
- OpenAlex
- W2156148770
- Cited by
- 877
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 47 · 2022: 36 · 2021: 47 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 39 · 2018: 55 · 2017: 50 · 2016: 57 · 2015: 55 · 2014: 51 · 2013: 49 · 2012: 34
- FWCI
- 214.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- americanae.aecid.es
- Locations
- Journal of Political Economy (publishedVersion)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (publishedVersion)
- Americanae (AECID Library) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Water Governance and Infrastructure
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Water Resource Management and Quality
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Child Nutrition and Water Access
- Keywords
- water privatization, child mortality, water access, water supply, Argentina, municipal water utilities, poverty, infectious and parasitic diseases, cause-specific mortality
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