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We study the effectiveness of a community-level information intervention aimed at improving sanitation using a cluster-randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Nigerian communities. The intervention, Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), is currently part of national sanitation policy in more than 25 countries. While average impacts are exiguous almost three years after implementation at scale, the results hide important heterogeneity: the intervention has strong and lasting effects on sanitation practices in poorer communities. These are realized through increased sanitation investments. We show that community wealth, widely available in secondary data, is a key statistic for effective intervention targeting. Using data from five other similar randomized interventions in various contexts, we find that community-level wealth heterogeneity can rationalize the wide range of impact estimates in the literature. This exercise provides plausible external validity to our findings, with implications for intervention scale-up.
Page updated 12/02/2020 - A previous version of this paper was uploaded here.
Authors

Research Fellow Institute for Fiscal Studies
Laura is a Research Fellow at IFS. Her current work focuses on tax and social protection policy and programme evaluation in developing countries.

Research Fellow Royal Holloway, University of London
Melanie joined the Institute for Fiscal Studies in 2006 as a Research Fellow and she is a Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Associate Director
Britta is an IFS Associate Director, Associate Staff at the Department of Economics at the UC and Researcher at NIHR Obesity Policy Research Unit.

Francisco Oteiza

Research Associate Royal Holloway, University of London
Juan is an IFS Research Associate and an Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Working Paper details
- DOI
- 10.1920/wp.ifs.2019.1119
- Publisher
- The IFS
Suggested citation
Abramovsky, L et al. (2019). Community matters: heterogenous impacts of a sanitation intervention. London: The IFS. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/community-matters-heterogenous-impacts-sanitation-intervention (accessed: 7 February 2025).
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