Risks from solar-powered groundwater irrigation.

Emissions reductions may not meet expectations, and groundwater use will likely increase.

Chronic kidney disease and household behaviors in Sri Lanka: Historical choices of drinking water and agrochemical use.

This paper examines whether there are systematic differences in the historical behaviors of households that are affected and unaffected by chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Sri Lanka pertaining to their water source choices, water treatment practices, and agrochemical use. This analysis is motivated by the Sri Lankan government's largest policy response to this epidemic - to encourage communities to switch from untreated well water to publicly provided alternatives. We use recall methods to elicit information on the drinking water source and treatment choices of households over an 18-year period from 2000-2017. Our analysis is based on a survey of 1497 rural ground-water dependent households in the most CKD-affected areas of the 10 districts of Sri Lanka with the highest prevalence of CKD. Our main findings are that (a) households that have ever used a pump to extract (typically deep) drinking water from a household well are more likely to be affected by CKD; (b) we fail to find a relationship between disease status and households' use of buckets to extract (typically shallow) groundwater from their wells; and (c) those who have ever treated their shallow well water by boiling it are less likely to be affected by CKD. We also find that a greater share of CKD affected households historically used agrochemicals, used wells that were geographically removed from surface water sources, and displayed lower proxies of wealth. The implications of these findings are fourfold. First, since the systematic differences in the historical patterns of water sources and treatments used by CKD affected and non-affected households are modest, the sources of water and the treatment practices themselves may not be the sole risk factors in developing CKD. Second, although we find a negative association between boiling water and the probability of CKD, it is not obvious that a public policy campaign to promote boiling water is an appropriate response. Third, the hydrochemistry of deep and shallow well water needs to be better understood in order to shed light on the positive relationship between deep well water and disease status, and on why boiling shallow but not deep well water is associated with a lower probability of CKD. Fourth, there is a need for a deeper understanding of other risk factors and of the efficacy of preventative programs that provide alternative sources of household drinking water.

Prevalence of chronic kidney disease in Sri Lanka: A profile of affected districts reliant on groundwater.

This analysis provides new estimates of chronic kidney disease (CKD) prevalence - including CKD of unknown etiology (CKDu) - across ten districts most affected by CKD in Sri Lanka, including an examination of rural households' historical reliance on groundwater consumption. A carefully designed household survey provides information on whether these households self-reported having a member in the decade prior to 2018, who had been clinically diagnosed with CKD. Households were classified according to whether or not they had used groundwater (from household wells, agro-wells or springs) as their primary source for drinking or cooking for at least five years between 1999 and 2018. More than 98% of households reported having consumed groundwater as their primary source of drinking or cooking water for at least five of those years and >15% of households reported having at least one CKD-affected member in the ten-year period up to 2018, but these numbers varied across and within districts. The reported characteristics of symptomatic individuals reveal that the incidence of CKD was significantly higher among females (62%) than males (38%). In addition to CKD, about 63% of symptomatic individuals had hypertension and about one-third of them also had diabetes. About 33% of the symptomatic individuals had neither diabetes nor hypertension, where this group most closely fits commonly used definitions of CKDu. With a survey response of over 8000 households comprising as many as 30,000 individuals, these data illustrate the scale of CKD in the most-affected districts of Sri Lanka on an aggregate basis as well as revealing differences across districts and at the sub-district level.

Do Different Types of Assets Have Differential Effects on Child Education?: Evidence from Tanzania.

To assess the conventional view that assets uniformly improve childhood development through wealth effects, this paper tests whether different types of assets have different effects on child education. The analysis indicates that household durables and housing quality have the expected positive effects, but agricultural assets have adverse effects on highest grade completed and no effects on exam performance. Extending the standard agricultural-household model by explicitly including child labor, the study uses three waves of panel data from Tanzania to estimate the effects of household assets on child education. The analysis corrects for the endogeneity of assets and uses a Hausman-Taylor instrumental variable panel data estimator to identify the effects of time-invariant observables and more efficiently control for time-invariant unobservables. The negative effect of agricultural assets is more pronounced among rural children and children from farming households, presumably due to the higher opportunity cost of their schooling.