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Household Deficiency in Demand for Water: Do Water Source and Travel Time Matter?

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Abstract

Despite the massive commitment by policy makers and stakeholders to increase the supply of water to households, many households have a deficiency in their daily quantity of water required for drinking and for general use. This paper focuses on the effect of water source and travelling time on households’ deficiency in demand for water using the GLSS6 data. A Tobit regression analysis of data on 2843 households reveals that a 1 minute increase in travelling time increases household deficiency in water demand by about 8 l (49%). Also, compared to pipe in dwelling/yard/plot, all other sources of water to the households come with greater levels of water deficiency. Government policies should focus on making more resources available to the Ghana Water Company Limited and the Community Water and Sanitation Agency so as to achieve more coverage of water accessible to both urban and rural households.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would rather like to acknowledge that the data for the study was made available by the Ghana Statistical Service and was given to the researchers for the basis of academic research and this is what the manuscript rightly represents.

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Correspondence to Isaac Koomson.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The Ghana Statistical Service (the agency/body that collected the Ghana Living Standards Survey 6—GLSS 6) has been collecting data since 1985, been very ethical and that informed all respondents within households of their intended purposes and gave them the will to be part before collecting data from them.

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Nunoo, J., Koomson, I. & Orkoh, E. Household Deficiency in Demand for Water: Do Water Source and Travel Time Matter?. Glob Soc Welf 5, 179–187 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-017-0092-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-017-0092-6

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