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Sewers and Urban Development
Presented by:
Matt Turner
Department of Economics
Brown University
Friday, March 15, 2024
12:00 pm-1:15 pm
Taylor-Hibbard Seminar Room (Rm103)
We investigate the effect of sewer access on neighborhood density and demographic composition in a sample of large cities in Brazil, Colombia, South Africa and Jordan. Sanitary sewers rely on gravity to operate, and it is difficult and expensive to move sewage uphill. This means that otherwise similar census tracts, close to, but on opposite sides of a drainage basin divide may have different costs of accessing a sewer network. We compare such tracts to learn about the effects of sewer access on neighborhood density and demographics. We find that a 1% increase in the share of households with sewer access causes about a 2% increase in population density. We find preliminary evidence suggesting economically important heterogeneity in the size of this effect across countries, and no evidence to suggest that people resort in response to changes in sewer access. The effect of sewers on density appears to be economically large, and to be large relative to the effects of highways.