The Relationship Between Water Access and Time Spent Collecting Water: Evidence from Nampula Province, Mozambique

Thesis Abstract:

More than 800 million people around the world, many of them from rural areas, lack access to clean water. Aiming to improve clean water access, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) funded a water supply project in rural Mozambique. Using household-level survey data from 2011 and 2013, this study seeks to answer the following question: did the installation of water pumps in rural communities in Mozambique reduce household water collection time? My results suggest that water collection time dropped more quickly for households in the treatment communities than for households in the control communities. This result supports the assumption made in the project’s theory of change, namely that installation of the water pumps will decrease water collection time.

For more information on this project, please visit the MCC evaluation catalogue: https://data.mcc.gov/evaluations/index.php/catalog/76