The increasing block tariff (IBT) is among the most widely used tariffs by water utilities, particularly in developing countries. This is in part due to the perception that the IBT can effectively target subsidies to low-income households. Combining data on households’ socioeconomic status and metered water use, this paper examines the distributional incidence of subsidies delivered through the water tariff in Nairobi, Kenya.

As the disease burden of poor access to water and sanitation declines around the world, the non-health benefits – mainly the time burden of water collection – will likely grow in importance in sector funding decisions and investment analysis. We measure the coping costs incurred by households in one area of rural Kenya. Sixty percent of the 387 households interviewed were collecting water outside the home, and household members were spending an average of two to three hours doing so per day.

We estimate the effect of hydro-meteorological emergencies on internal migration in Costa Rica during 1995–2000. We find that, on average, emergencies significantly increase average migration. However, we also find that emergencies with the most severe consequences, those with loss of lives, decrease migration. The severity of the consequences may explain the differences in the sign of the effect in previous research. We also find that emergencies significantly increase population in metropolitan areas. Less severe emergencies significantly increase migration toward metropolitan areas.

It is conventional wisdom that poor households use less water than rich households, and intuition suggests that an increasing block tariff with a lifeline block will target subsidies to poor households.

In this paper, we study the determinants of rental values in urban housing markets in Kigali, Rwanda.

In particular, we study the value of access to piped water; due to the high costs associated with installing new piped connections, renting a property with an existing connection is often the only way for low income households to access piped water. Our results indicate that extending the piped network to a new house will in many cases raise the rental value of the house enough to pay for the cost of installing the new connection in less than two years.

Cooperation regarding the use of common pool resources can be difficult to achieve. Different management regimes may channel a resource’s benefits differently among users. This can be a problem when regulatory regimes are uniform in nature – in other words, when the same rules apply to everyone regardless of their different circumstances. To examine the role of this heterogeneity among resource users, we surveyed farmers in Tunisia about policies for managing groundwater pumping.

We examine the effect of the introduction of uniform water-charging for aquifer management and provide evidence using a survey-based choice experiment of agricultural water users in rural Tunisia. Theoretically, we show that the implementation of the proposed second-best regulation would result both in efficiency gains and in distributional effects in favour of small landholders. Empirically, we find that resistance to the introduction of an effective water-charging regime is greatest amongst the largest landholders.

This study used household survey data from four Kenyan towns to examine the effect of households' characteristics and risk perceptions on their decision to treat/filter water as well as on their choice of main drinking water source. Because the two decisions may be jointly made by the household, a seemingly unrelated bivariate probit model was estimated. It turned out that treating non-piped water and using piped water as a main drinking water source were substitutes.

Rainwater harvesting is increasingly viewed as a major strategy for enhancing agricultural productivity and boosting farm income in many drought-prone areas. While this technology is being promoted in many developing countries, there is conflicting evidence in the literature about its impact on welfare of farm households.