Author
Listed:
- Stefanos Xenarios
(CSIRO Environment, Building 101, Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain, ACT 2601, Australia†Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarbayev University, Astana 010000, Kazakhstan)
- Ethan Y. Edwards
(��Bluefield Research, Boston, MA 02110, USA)
- Joost Buurman
(�Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore)
Abstract
Urban water utilities attempt to achieve financial sustainability by increasing tariffs to cover the operational and maintenance costs and raise funds for infrastructural projects. Although the tariffs are relatively low compared to average household incomes in developed countries, concerns remain about the affordability in low-income groups. This study analyzes the urban water consumption and the effects of water tariffs on affordability in 266 upper-middle- and high-income cities from 44 countries for the period 2011–2021. The water consumption does not distinctively differentiate within the assessed period, and the water tariffs seem to have moderate effects on the consumption trends. The consumption is proportionally higher when fixed (flat) rates are applied and when the fixed rates are higher than the variable (usage) rates. There is high variation in the affordability rate in the sample cities; however, the cities of South Europe, Central and East Europe and South America seem to have the lowest affordability levels. The affordability appears to have improved for the majority of our sample cities from 2017 to 2021, while the higher water fees and increased consumption are associated with a decrease in affordability throughout the same period.
Suggested Citation
Stefanos Xenarios & Ethan Y. Edwards & Joost Buurman, 2025.
"Water Tariffs and Affordability in Urban Water Supply and Wastewater Systems,"
Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 11(02), pages 1-33, June.
Handle:
RePEc:wsi:wepxxx:v:11:y:2025:i:02:n:s2382624x24500164
DOI: 10.1142/S2382624X24500164
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to
for a different version of it.
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:wsi:wepxxx:v:11:y:2025:i:02:n:s2382624x24500164. 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.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/wep/wep.shtml .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.