IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/afjare/160632.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Water Poverty and Rural Development: Evidence from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Matshe, Innocent
  • Moyo-Maposa, Sibonginkosi
  • Zikhali, Precious

Abstract

Using household data from the 2009 General Household Survey, this paper examines the role of natural resource scarcity in rural development in South Africa, with a particular focus on water scarcity. It seeks to examine whether there is a direct link between household water and economic poverty of rural households, with households’ total monthly income used as an indicator of economic poverty. An adaptation of a comprehensive water poverty index, which considers water access, quality, use, and water-related environmental aspects is used to measure household-level water poverty. The empirical analysis uses an instrumental variable estimation framework in order to deal with the potential endogeneity between water and economic poverty. Results support the existence of a direct link between water and economic poverty, with water-poor households likely to be economically poor. In particular, the results suggest that access to good quality water from a reliable source significantly enhances rural households’ economic status. Also, access to water determines the realized impact of overall water poverty on a household’s economic status. The paper thus cautions development policy not to treat water and economic poverty in isolation; there is need for development policy in South Africa to streamline water use in rural development. In addition, development policies need to take into account the role of household heterogeneity in conditioning both household water and economic poverty levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Matshe, Innocent & Moyo-Maposa, Sibonginkosi & Zikhali, Precious, 2013. "Water Poverty and Rural Development: Evidence from South Africa," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 8(2), pages 1-21, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:afjare:160632
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.160632
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/160632/files/Chapter%206.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.160632?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Molden, D. & Amarasinghe, U. & Hussain, I., 2001. "Water for rural development: Background paper on water for rural development prepared for the World Bank," IWMI Working Papers H029260, International Water Management Institute.
    2. Lars Osberg & Kuan Xu, 2008. "How Should We Measure Poverty in a Changing World? Methodological Issues and Chinese Case Study," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(2), pages 419-441, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. A. Majeed Nadeem & Roland Cheo & Huang Shaoan, 2018. "Multidimensional Analysis of Water Poverty and Subjective Well-Being: A Case Study on Local Household Variation in Faisalabad, Pakistan," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(1), pages 207-224, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Duangkamon Chotikapanich & William Griffiths & Wasana Karunarathne & D.S. Prasada Rao, 2013. "Calculating Poverty Measures from the Generalised Beta Income Distribution," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 89, pages 48-66, June.
    2. Gustafsson, Björn Anders & Sai, Ding, 2019. "Growing into Relative Income Poverty: Urban China 1988 to 2013," IZA Discussion Papers 12422, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Martin Ravallion & Shaohua Chen, 2011. "Weakly Relative Poverty," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1251-1261, November.
    4. Björn Gustafsson & Ding Sai, 2020. "Growing into Relative Income Poverty: Urban China, 1988–2013," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 73-94, January.
    5. World Bank, 2006. "Reengaging in Agricultural Water Management: Challenges and Options," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6957, December.
    6. Goodarzi, Mostafa & Li, Qifeng, 2022. "Evaluate the capacity of electricity-driven water facilities in small communities as virtual energy storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    7. Peng Peng & Hui Mao, 2023. "The Effect of Digital Financial Inclusion on Relative Poverty Among Urban Households: A Case Study on China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 165(2), pages 377-407, January.
    8. Zehua Wang & Fachao Liang & Sheng-Hau Lin, 2023. "Can socially sustainable development be achieved through homestead withdrawal? A hybrid multiple-attributes decision analysis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-18, December.
    9. Lars Osberg & Andrew Sharpe, 2014. "Measuring Economic Insecurity in Rich and Poor Nations," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(S1), pages 53-76, May.
    10. Lars Osberg, 2015. "The Hunger of Old Women in Rural Tanzania: Can Subjective Data Improve Poverty Measurement?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 723-738, December.
    11. Shuo Ding, 2022. "A Comparative Analysis of Vulnerability to Poverty between Urban and Rural Households in China," Economies, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-28, October.
    12. de Fraiture, Charlotte & Wichelns, D. & Rockstrom, J. & Kemp-Benedict, E. & Eriyagama, Nishadi & Gordon, L. J. & Hanjra, M. A. & Hoogeveen, J. & Huber-Lee, A. & Karlberg, L., 2007. "Looking ahead to 2050: scenarios of alternative investment approaches," Book Chapters,, International Water Management Institute.
    13. Lars Osberg, 2010. "Measuring Economic Insecurity and Vulnerability as Part of Economic Well-Being: Concepts and Context," Working Papers daleconwp2010-04, Dalhousie University, Department of Economics.
    14. John Paolo Rosales Rivera, 2022. "A nonparametric approach to understanding poverty in the Philippines: Evidence from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(3), pages 242-267, September.
    15. Achyut Wagle, 2008. "Human Capital Flight: The Cause of Underdevelopment," NRB Economic Review, Nepal Rastra Bank, Research Department, vol. 20, pages 32-43, April.
    16. Vernon W. Ruttan, 2002. "Productivity Growth in World Agriculture: Sources and Constraints," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 161-184, Fall.
    17. Plante, Charles, 2018. "Policy or Window Dressing? Exploring the Impact of Poverty Reduction Strategies on Poverty Rates among the Canadian Provinces," SocArXiv xtnfg, Center for Open Science.
    18. Chunyun Wang & Xiaoxi Yu & Jiang Zhao, 2022. "Identifying the Real Income Disparity in Prefecture-Level Cities in China: Measurement of Subnational Purchasing Power Parity Based on the Stochastic Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-24, August.
    19. Mussa, Richard, 2015. "A joint analysis of correlates of poverty intensity, incidence, and gap with application to Malawi," MPRA Paper 65205, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Tomson Ogwang, 2022. "The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke Poverty Measures Reveal More," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1481-1503, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:afjare:160632. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaaeaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.