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1 Cook, J.; Kimuyu, P.; Whittington, D. 2016. The costs of coping with poor water supply in rural Kenya. Water Resources Research, 52(2):841-859. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/2015WR017468.]
Water supply ; Water harvesting ; Water costs ; Pricing ; Cost benefit analysis ; Economic aspects ; Households ; Water storage ; Wells ; Drinking water ; Wastewater treatment ; Public health ; Sanitation ; Rural areas / Kenya / Kianjai
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H047482)
(2.66 MB)
As the disease burden of poor access to water and sanitation declines around the world, the nonhealth benefits––mainly the time burden of water collection – will likely grow in importance in sector funding decisions and investment analyses. 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 2–3 h doing so per day. We value these time costs using an individual-level value of travel time estimate based on a stated preference experiment. We compare these results to estimates obtained assuming that the value of time saved is a fraction of unskilled wage rates. Coping cost estimates also include capital costs for storage and rainwater collection, money paid either to water vendors or at sources that charge volumetrically, costs of treating diarrhea cases, and expenditures on drinking water treatment (primarily boiling in our site). Median total coping costs per month are approximately US$20 per month, higher than average household water bills in many utilities in the United States, or 12% of reported monthly cash income. We estimate that coping costs are greater than 10% of income for over half of households in our sample. They are higher among larger and wealthier households, and households whose primary source is not at home. Even households with unprotected private wells or connections to an intermittent piped network spend money on water storage containers and on treating water they recognize as unsafe.
2 Fuente, D.; Kabubo-Mariara, J.; Kimuyu, P.; Mwaura, M.; Whittington, D. 2021. Assessing the performance of water and sanitation tariffs: the case of Nairobi, Kenya. Water Resources Research, 58p. (Online first) [doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025791]
Water use ; Sanitation ; Water pricing ; Tariffs ; Wastewater ; Water conservation ; Policy making ; Cost recovery ; Water rates ; Developing countries ; Households / Africa / Kenya / Nairobi
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H050582)
(0.96 MB)
Policymakers and utility managers can use a variety of tariff structures to calculate customers’ bills for water and sanitation services, ranging from a simple fixed monthly fee to complicated multi-part tariffs with seasonal pricing based on metered water use. This paper examines the performance of several alternative tariff structures for water and wastewater services in Nairobi, Kenya using a dynamic tariff simulation model applied to a complete set of billing records from Nairobi City Water and Sewer Company. Simulations show that a uniform volumetric price tariff structure performs as well as or better than several increasing block tariff structures across the six performance metrics considered (customer welfare, social welfare, cost recovery, the subsidy delivered through the tariff, subsidy incidence, and water conservation). These findings are robust to changes in the level of cost recovery. This finding challenges the wisdom of the widespread use of increasing block tariffs (IBTs) in low- and middle-income countries and current perceptions of best practice in tariff design.
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