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Water access in post-tsunami Indonesia

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Abstract

The health consequences of disaster recovery efforts are rarely evaluated comprehensively. With increases in public spending usually accompanying claims by aid agencies and national governments about improving resilience, the potential impacts of reconstruction processes on public health deserve a closer look. This study focuses on the region of Indonesia that was hit hardest by the massive 2004 tsunami and was then the epicenter of an unprecedented recovery effort. I turn to data from a unique longitudinal survey to evaluate multiple dimensions of water access for almost 6000 families over 10 years. Using logit and multinomial logit regression analysis, I demonstrate that richer households increasingly access higher quality water sources, while poorer households disproportionately turn to lower-quality sources. This result has important implications for health outcomes and for our understanding of how vulnerability extends past the moment of a disaster.

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Notes

  1. Analyses have also been conducted on a larger sample that includes household “split-offs” – family members that departed one household to form another. No conclusions are challenged by these supplemental findings, which are available upon request.

  2. Consistent with local context, I assume throughout the analysis to follow that some natural source (spring, river, rainwater) is available to each household.

  3. The panel sample for regression is slightly smaller than the descriptive sample because of item non-response.

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  1. Duke Population Research Institute, Duke University, Box 90989, Durham, NC, 27708-0989, USA

    Michael Burrows

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Burrows, M. Water access in post-tsunami Indonesia. Popul Environ 40, 411–433 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-019-00318-5

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