An official website of the United States government
Abstract ObjectivesFood and water insecurity have both been demonstrated as acute and chronic stressors and undermine human health and development. A basic untested proposition is that they chronically coexist, and that household water insecurity is a fundamental driver of household food insecurity. MethodsWe provide a preliminary assessment of their association using cross‐sectional data from 27 sites with highly diverse forms of water insecurity in 21 low‐ and middle‐income countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas (N = 6691 households). Household food insecurity and its subdomains (food quantity, food quality, and anxiety around food) were estimated using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale; water insecurity and subdomains (quantity, quality, and opportunity costs) were estimated based on similar self‐reported data. ResultsIn multilevel generalized linear mixed‐effect modeling (GLMM), composite water insecurity scores were associated with higher scores for all subdomains of food insecurity. Rural households were better buffered against water insecurity effects on food quantity and urban ones for food quality. Similarly, higher scores for all subdomains of water insecurity were associated with greater household food insecurity. ConclusionsConsidering the diversity of sites included in the modeling, the patterning supports a basic theory: household water insecurity chronically coexists with household food insecurity. Water insecurity is a more plausible driver of food insecurity than the converse. These findings directly challenge development practices in which household food security interventions are often enacted discretely from water security ones.
more »
« less
Inequality of household water security follows a Development Kuznets Curve
Abstract Water security requires not only sufficient availability of and access to safe and acceptable quality for domestic uses, but also fair distribution within and across populations. However, a key research gap remains in understanding water security inequality and its dynamics, which in turn creates an impediment to tracking progress towards sustainable development. Therefore, we analyse the inequality of water security using data from 7603 households across 28 sites in 22 low- and middle-income countries, measured using the Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale. Here we show an inverted-U shaped relationship between site water security and inequality of household water security. This Kuznets-like curve suggests a process that as water security grows, the inequality of water security first increases then decreases. This research extends the Kuznets curve applications and introduces the Development Kuznets Curve concept. Its practical implications support building water security and achieving more fair, inclusive, and sustainable development.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1759972
- PAR ID:
- 10426801
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-1723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Water scholarship has advanced considerably in recent decades. Despite this remarkable progress, water challenges may be growing more quickly than our capacity to solve them. While much progress has been made toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 — water and sanitation for all — new stressors have emerged to threaten this progress. Far from being a problem of the Global South, recent research shows that water insecurity is very much a global phenomenon — and one that has been, until recently, seriously neglected in the Global North. This indicates a strong need for innovative measurement of who experiences water insecurity, new approaches for monitoring the efficacy of water interventions, and more effective management of complex, mobile, and multiple water infrastructures to achieve water security. In this paper, we introduce the Household Water Insecurity approach to addressing these concerns. First, we suggest ways to improve the measurement of water insecurity — pinpointing problems at the household and individual levels — in ways that can inform policymaking with improved precision. Second, we discuss ways that new information and communication technology can improve monitoring and indicate where water infrastructure repairs and investments are most needed. Third, we highlight the need for new approaches to managing complex water infrastructures in more inclusive and democratic ways.more » « less
-
Across many cultural contexts, the majority of women conduct the majority of their household labor. This gendered distribution of labor is often unequal, and thus represents one of the most frequently experienced forms of daily inequality because it occurs within one’s own home. Young children are often passive observers of their family’s distribution of labor, and yet little is known about the developmental onset of their perceptions of it. By the preschool age, children also show strong normative feelings about both equal resource distribution and gender stereotypes. To investigate the developmental onset of children’s recognition of the (in)equality of household labor, we interviewed 3 to 10-y-old children in two distinct cultural contexts (US and China) and surveyed their caregivers about who does more household labor across a variety of tasks. Even at the youngest ages and in both cultural contexts, children’s reports largely matched their parents’, with both populations reporting that mothers do the majority of household labor. Both children and parents judged this to be generally fair, suggesting that children are observant of the gendered distribution of labor within their households, and show normalization of inequality from a young age. Our results point to preschool age as a critical developmental time period during which it is important to have parent-child discussions about structural constraints surrounding gender norms and household labor.more » « less
-
ABSTRACT Water (in)security is central to achieving sustainable development in Arctic communities. To characterize the pervasive and place-based challenges faced by Arctic residents and communities, water insecurity can be examined across five dimensions (i.e., availability, accessibility, safety, reliability and preference). Based on an analysis of 61 studies, this narrative review synthesizes how the human dimensions of Arctic water insecurity have been measured in the scientific literature. This review serves as a resource for researchers, policymakers and practitioners when selecting measures of water insecurity based on past studies, and for addressing knowledge gaps through the development of new measures in partnership with Arctic and Indigenous communities. Faced with rapid climatic and societal change, enhanced human-centered measures of water insecurity in the Arctic will enable future research, policy, monitoring, management and stewardship. This is necessary to achieve the human right to water and Sustainable Development Goal of clean water and sanitation for all.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Abstract Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is undergoing rapid transformations in the realm of union formation in tandem with significant educational expansion and rising labor force participation rates. Concurrently, the region remains the least developed and most unequal along multiple dimensions of human and social development. In spite of this unique scenario, never has the social stratification literature examined patterns and implications of educational assortative mating for inequality in SSA. Using 126 Demographic and Health Surveys from 39 SSA countries between 1986 and 2016, this study is the first to document changing patterns of educational assortative mating by marriage cohort, subregion, and household location of residence and relate them to prevailing sociological theories on mating and development. Results show that net of shifts in educational distributions, mating has increased over marriage cohorts in all subregions except for Southern Africa, with increases driven mostly by rural areas. Trends in rural areas align with the status attainment hypothesis, whereas trends in urban areas are consistent with the inverted U-curve framework and the increasing applicability of the general openness hypothesis. The inequality analysis conducted through a combination of variance decomposition and counterfactual approaches reveals that mating accounts for a nonnegligible share (3% to 12%) of the cohort-specific inequality in household wealth, yet changes in mating over time hardly move time trends in wealth inequality, which is in line with findings from high-income societies.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31867-3
