Water and Sanitation in El Salvador
Evaluation Description
The Water and Sanitation Sub-Activity is part of El Salvador’s five-year Compact that was signed in 2006. The water and sanitation services are designed to reduce poverty and increase household income by a) decreasing the cost and time to collect water, and b) reducing the incidence of water-borne diseases which reduces the costs of health services and the number of hours of work lost by water borne diseases.
The impact assessment of the activity will estimate the impact of water and sanitation improvements on beneficiary household income and other measures of welfare. Water and sanitation projects are being selected through a demand driven process. A call for proposals was issued in March 2008 and criteria were used to select the proposals to move on to the feasibility stage. Only a small number of proposals were rejected. The evaluation methodology relies on matching the selected project communities with similar communities in the Northern Zone using data from the population census conducted in 2007.
To estimate impact, the average change in income of those receiving the services will be compared to the average change in income of those who were not programmed to receive the services. For more information on the program see the El Salvador Country Page.
Data Collection
The evaluation will use household surveys as well as tests of the quality of the water at the household level and at the source point. The sample size and final survey schedule have not been determined yet; however the current data collection plan anticipates that each household will be surveyed three times, 1) baseline in April 2009, 2) follow up in April 2011 and 3) final in April 2012.
Timeline
