Volume 1, Number 3
October 1995

Water and Health (and Gender)

IFPRI is developing a new program of research that combines two research areas: water and health and water and gender. Part of the new CG intercenter initiative on water management, the program of research will be a tripartite undertaking with the International Irrigation Management Institute and the International Center for Research on Women. The research program will seek to answer the question: do water allocation mechanisms ignore information on the economic returns to improved water access for domestic usage and on the economic returns from women's farm use? The program will tie in closely with IFPRI's research on water allocation mechanisms that asks under which conditions are markets, public utilities, or user groups the most efficient allocation mechanisms? If the water allocation mechanism neglects information on the economic returns from (1) improved domestic water access and (2) improved access to water for women's agricultural production, what are the implications for water allocation and for water allocation mechanisms? A preliminary review of the water-health-economic productivity literature by Ginger Harris at IFPRI indicates that economists tend to treat improved water quality in a very crude and cursory manner in their health production functions, often modeling improved water access with a zero-one dummy variable. The next newsletter will have more to report on this subject. Comments are especially welcomed on this topic. (Please send comments to L.HADDAD@cgiar.org.)