Does improved sanitation reduce diarrhea in children in rural India?

Santosh Kumar
Sebastian Vollmer

Abstract

Almost nine million children under five 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 DLHS-3 to quantify the impact of access to improved sanitation on diarrheal morbidity for children under five years of age in India. Using Propensity Score Matching (PSM), 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 neither find statistically significant treatment effects for children in low or middle socioeconomic status (SES) households nor for girls, however, boys and children in high (SES) households experienced economically significant treatment effects. The magnitude of the treatment effect also differs largely by behavior.