The impact of water quality on health: evidence from the drinking water infrastructure program in rural China.
This paper investigates the effect of a major water quality improvement program in rural China on the health of adults and children. Using panel data covering about 4500 households from 1989 to 2006, I estimate the impact of introducing village-level access to water from water plants on various measures of health. The regression results imply that the illness incidence of adults decreased by 11 percent and their weight-for-height increased by 0.835kg/m, and that children's weight-for-height and height itself both rose by 0.446kg/m and 0.962cm respectively, as a result of the program. And these estimates are quite stable across different robustness checks.
School of Finance, China Financial Policy Research Center, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100872, China. zhangjingecon@gmail.com
Jing
J
Zhang
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D060766:Drinking Water / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012423:Rural Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D060753:Water Quality
D060766:Drinking Water