sanitation in india

For anyone travelling to India the question of public sanitation naturally arises. Garbage collects on the streets alongside animal waste. Men stop on the side of the road to relieve themselves. Toddlers squat right out in the open to defecate. The extremely naive notion is that it is culture that explains why Indians of all walks of life accept this . (India of course is far from alone in the developing world in struggling with these issues. Click here for more.) A historical perspective. In _Conditions of the Working Class in England_ Engels describes 19th century urban England. It matches what one sees in urban India today: Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns; usually one- or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses of three or four rooms and a kitchens form, throughout England, some parts of London excepted, the general dwellings of the working-class. The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men's quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines are stretched across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing. (For reference click here.) Stuart Blumin in his book _The Emergence of the American Middle Class_ describes the same transition taking place between late 18th century urban America and the post-bellum period. Urban America moved from "street-alley segregation" of classes to "areal" segregation. Street-alley segregation meant wealthier families lived on the broader, better maintained streets while poorer families lived nearby, down narrower and more crowded alleys. Areal segregation means different social classes living in distinct neighborhoods. Advances in transportation made it possible for more affluent city dwellers to in one way or another to remove themselves from direct contact with what Engels describes above. And something similar is happening today in modern India. Slums are being cleared and slum families relocated. In the place of slums multi-storied apartments are built for the middle class and wealthier families. Those able to separate themselves from the less fortunate do so. It means that the illnesses and the other problems of the poor become less and less of an immediate threat to their own family's well-being. With this, the more affluent need worry far less about the poor's welfare. The poor continue to live their lives, removed from the sight of the "happier" classes . No Other Choice: Enduring open sewers and refuse of all kinds is not a cultural choice. Access to running water and toilets is obscenely small in India. With considerable variation state by state, according to the 2001 census fewer than 30% of homes in India have toilets (with a sizeable percentage of these being pit latrines or pit toilets. For a break down I've compiled state by state click here). This begs the question as to why investment in water and sewer systems are not given priority, especially given the seriousness of the diseases caued by improper sanitation.

Two important differences between modern India and urban 19th century America and western Europe:

The provision of clean water and sewer connections was not remarkably fast in the now indistrialized world (see for example, Martin Melosi's _The Sanitary City_) There are two things that make India's current situation different from western Europe or America's in the 19th century however that have made progress even slower in India and in other economically developing countries. The first has to do with the medical advances that have taken place between the 19th century and now. The second is the sheer size of the problem India faces now now versus what America and western Europe had to deal with a century and a half ago.

Modern medicine has made it possible for economically privileged families to protect themselves without having to worry as much about the poor and their situation. In contrast to 19th century America and western Europe, middle class and wealthier families can insulate themselves fairly effectively against diseases such as cholera and dysentary. Abram De Swaan in his book _In the Care of the State_ details how even as more properous families located in suburban areas with new construction and water and sewer lines they could not completely protect themselves from diseases spread from the poorer sections of 19th century America and Europe. Also with greater numbers of poor people crowded into urban areas it was more and more likely that dieseases such as cholera would break out and spread from poorer areas to wealthier ones. Before antibiotics, other advances in medical care, and insecticides weighing the threat of diseases spreading to wealthier neighborhoods against the added costs of extending water and sewer lines to poor neighborhoods, the calculus of enlightened self-interest tipped the scales in favor of the poor (see Abram De Swaan, pp. 137-142). In modern India the costs and the benefits have changed radically. Poor areas are incredibly congested and therefore very difficult (i.e. costly) to connect to existing water and sewer lines. At the same time and more importantly, the direct benefits to wealthier families of such measures are far less thanks to modern medicine which better protects them against the threat of diseases originating in poorer areas.* *Susan Chaplin in her article "Cities, Sewers and Poverty: India's Politics of Sanitation" (environment and Urbanization, 1999, pp. 145-158) clearly notes this "...the very developlements in modern medicine and civil engineering that contributed to the success of sanitation/ public health in nineteenth century Britain have enabled the middle class to largely ignore environmental problems and the resulting diseases. The use of antibiotics and insecticides have generally contained potential epidemics in slum areas, and hence have not generated a mutual awareness amoung the middle-class that it would be in the interests of society as a whole if the poor were provided with decent living conditions" (Chaplin, p. 151) The congestion and the resultant costs of dealing with sanitation issues are in part a function of much higher rates of increase in numbers and therefore a much larger scale problem to be dealt with. Mira Kamdar in _Planet India_ notes that urban India grows by 10 million people a year. and in Calcutta, The Living City, volume 2 it is noted that Mumbai saw its population increase by 1000 people per day through migration. (Although these numbers are out of date one can imagine the problem is even worse today). America and western Europe had much smaller numbers to deal with during their periods of substantial urban growth. Other factors: A great degree of India's failure to conquer the problems of sanitation and clean water are therefore arguably due to the these two factors. Other factors of course are at play as well. There is the fear on the part of municipal authorities that if in they take measures to improve the living conditions of the poor that this will simply attract more poor migrants to them. There is a Harris-Todaro like argument implicit in this that therefore improvements will be short-lived. As conditions in city A improve a larger fraction of those migrants who might have moved to city B will move instead to A, overtaxing its capacity to serve them and pushing living conditions back to where they were before. The initially cleaner city is ultimately no better off than it was before. One conclusion to be drawn from this is that piecemeal efforts to effect change are far less likely to achieve success than coordinated concerted effort on at least a regional if not national front. There is also the fact that many slum areas are occupied by squatters. The fear is that extending proper water and sanitation will legitimize squatters' claims to these lands. Often large slums are located in what are considered areas of prime real estate (currently Dharavi in Mumbai and the Salt Lake area in Kolkata years ago as well.). As an area becomes more and more settled real estate developers must realize that it will be far more difficult for the state to remove and relocate slum dwellers from these areas on their behalf. (see pages 14-15 of Burra, Patel and Kerr, "Community Designed, built and Managed Toilet Blocks in Indian Cities" Environment and Urbanization, 2003, pp. 11-32) The great predicament is that if the Alliance (SPARC, the National Slum Dwellers Federation, and Mahila Milan) estimates are correct and a 10 seat toilet block will serve 500 people in an area are realtively low cost ($800 U.S. to build a well-designed 10 seat toilet block with pour-flush systems) the fact remains that to tackle this problem requires massive expenditures. For example, in Mumbai almost 2000 such blocks would need to be built to cover slum dwellers who, as of now, haven't access to proper facilities at all. Using the official exchange rate, the total costs would therefore be over one and a half million dollars U.S. (and in terms of purchasing power parity almost $8 million U.S.). Regardless of the cost, management of various charities and NGOs of 2000 such projects along with the competition for money as these organizations work independently of one another implies a high degree of inefficiency. Yet along with the decided apathy that exists due to government focusing mostly on the interests of the well-to-do and the powerful there is the issue of government inefficiency. Burra, Patel, and Kerr make a strong case for being more than a bit skeptical about the ability of municipal governments being at all efficient. One Alliance study cited in their article shows that contractors have routinely built substandard toilet blocks.** Inadequate water supplies in particular mean that often in as little as three months latrines become so blocked and dirty that they become unusable. This couple with builders asking community members for more money as toilet blocks are being built in their neighborhoods and the city charging unrealistically high fees for access (Rs150 for a family of five would allow each family member to use the facilities once a day) suggests that perhaps community based initiatives, given political realities, are on balance a better alternative. ** See Robert Wade_Governing the Market_ pages 288-289. Contrasting corruption in Taiwan to corruption in India he notes that in East Asia: "Most rumored or reported corruption takes place at the local and provincial government levels where nothing major for the national development effort is at stake ... In all these ways corruption contrasts with corruption in many other countries in South and Southeast Asia. Corruption on public works projects, for example, occurs mainly through overcharging for correctly built structures. In India it occurs mainly by substandard construction of correctly priced structures, which are much more likely to wash out in the next monsoon. Taiwan's mode is probably less damaging to economic development than India's".

More public support for higher education

A story on Congressman Jim Webb's proposal to more completely fund veterans college education ran this morning on NPR's Morning Edition. More specifics on Congressman Webb's proposal is to found here on his website. Another related story ran on Marketplace Morning Report. On October 1st a new law comes into effect that changes how students loans are distributed and the rates of interest charged. For more on this click here. The impetus for this new law comes from the Campaign for America's Future .

The G.I. Bill

One way of describing what college professors do is to say that we perpetuate middle class privilege. We could also say that we help to protect the economic gains many families and the American economy overall enjoyed as a result of the G.I. Bill. For more on the G.I. Bill and its impact on American society click here.

socioeconomic standing and access to higher education

Over the last several days I have been struggling with some numbers I had seen reported. These numbers are statistics on minority enrollments and the persistence of enrollment gaps between African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Non-Hispanic White Americans and Asian Americans. A study by Carnavale and Fry for ETS "Crossing the Great Divide: Can we Achieve Equity When Generation Y Goes to College?" notes that, although the total number of minority students (African-American and Hispanic American) enrolled in college is projected to rise as is the percentage of total enrollments, a significant gap between the share of 18-24 year olds in these groups and the number of African American and Hispanic American 18-24 year olds enrolled as students will grow. (By 2015, 550,000 fewer young Hispanic-Americans enrolled than one would expect given projected population and over 200,000 fewer young African-Americans.) This is a very funny number. The projected population totals are based sensibly on current trends in the growth of different groups (presumably it is based firstly on the number of children born between 1991 and 1997 and then with adjustments made for complicating factors such as immigration, deaths, and so on). However, the appendix to "Crossing" explains that projected enrollments are based on the assumption that current enrollment rates (obscenely lower for African-American and Hispanic Americans 18-24 year olds) will continue. (see Projection Methodology p. 55 of "Crossing"). So numbers such as those for Fall 2005 from the Census Bureau were used. These numbers show that while 40% of non-Hispanic White Americans 18-24 years old were enrolled full time or part time in four year colleges and 50% of Asian Americans only 29% of African Americans 18-24 years old were enrolled part time or full time in four year colleges and only 24% of Hispanic Americans of this age group were. Given the age range reported (18 year olds to 24 year olds) one would expect to see a fraction of 18-24 year olds who have completed their undergraduate degrees. And indeed you do see this. According to the Census Bureau the numbers were 4% for White-Americans, 3.5% for African Americans, only 1.82% for Hispanic Americans, and almost 9% for Asian Americans in October 2005. More importantly and my main reason for looking at these numbers are that regardless of ethnicity there are significant differences in enrollment rates -in either two year or four year colleges or in four year colleges- according to SES (socioeconomic standing). Haveman and Smeeding( "The Role of Higher Education in Social Mobility", The Future of Children, vol. 16, no. 2., Fall 2006, pp. 125-150) note that 90% percent of students from families with incomes in the top quartile of earnings were enrolled in college twenty months after graduation (73% in four year colleges) only 60% of students from the bottom quartile were enrolled in college twenty months after graduation (with fewer than half enrolled in four year colleges, 37% in two year colleges, and 17% enrolled in vocational/technical schools.) To assume that low enrollment rates will persist -as Carnavale and Fry implicitly do- is not very helpful. Similarly, while racial discrimination is in part the cause of lower SES, it is much more important to focus attention on social class as an obstacle to higher education and success. To focus on race seems to invite substantive versus formalist interpretations of the achievment gap. In other words, that the differences in achievment are in large part due to cultural factors. However, controlling for race, there is a strong statistically significant relationship between family income levels and enrollment in college (in either two or four year schools or in four year schools). Using data for October 2005, I find that enrollment rates were about 23% points higher for 18-24 year olds students from families with incomes in the $100,000 to $150,000 range than they were for 18-24 year olds whose families earned between $30,000-$40,000 for example. (These numbers are derived from regression I have run using Census Bureau data on fall enrollments for Fall of 2005.) I am incredibly impressed with a paper entitled "Reducing Inequality in Higher Education: Where Do We Go From Here?" by Cornell University's Ronald Ehrenberg . I am impressed first because of its focus on SES and the inequalities that are perpetuated by both the differences in access to higher education as well as differences in levels of success after a student enters colleges. I am also impressed because of its focus on an analysis of what possibly can be done -in terms of financial aid, education policy at the primary and secondary levels, and within college itself- to assist students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds . For good measure there is a thoughtful discussion of the direct and indirect financial pressures colleges and universities face and how these pressures have led them to worry far less about their role in perpetuating inequality. The paper was presented at the Conference on Economic Inequality and Higher Education: Access, Persistence, and Success, Syracuse University, September 23-24, 2005). Ehrenberg's main points are (1) that little advance has been made in enrollments of students from low income families since the 1970s, (2) that states have increasingly faced tight budgets and, as a result, have kept state spending per student at more or less constant levels since the 1970s, (3) that increased spending per student has therefore been funded largely by tuition increases, (4) that , perversely, as the private returns to college have grown and the gap in earnings between the college educated and those without college degrees has increased, the tuition increases have been more or less tolerated by middle class families. The increases are regarded as the price to be paid for protecting their position. (5) that the increase in tution at four year colleges has shifted proportionately more and more low income students into two year colleges, (6) that given the difficulty of transitioning from two year to four year colleges, especially to those schools where transfers from two year colleges are relatively rare -persistence- the ability of transfer students to complete their undergraduate degrees has fallen.

He outlines several very recent programs at flagship public universities such as UVA, the University of Texas, and UNC-Chapel Hill to increase enrollment of students from low-income families as well as very recent efforts by Princeton (1998), Harvard (2005), and Yale (2006) to increase enrollment rates and graduation rates of students from low-income families. Very selective schools by definition admit and graduate mostly students from wealthier families. Hill, Winston, and Boyd ("Affordability: Family Incomes and Net Prices at Highly Selective Private Colleges and Universities" Journal of Human Resources, 40 (fall 2005)) note that 108,721 students earned undergraduate degrees at the 28 highly selective private colleges and universities in their study. This implies that well under 10% of all the students earning bachelor's degrees in spring of 2002 received their degrees from such schools. Given the cost of attending such institutions, one can safely assume that families of relatively modest means were receiving some sort of financial aid. Assuming that all middle class and low-income families attending these schools received some kind of aid, students from families earning less than $51,000 a year represented only 17% of students graduating from such schools.

To make these very exclusive schools more inclusive is fine. However, students from wealthy families are disproportionately represented in these schools and always will be. Besides this, as noted above only a small percent of college graduates in a given year earn their degrees from such institutions. Therefore changes here cannot be expected to create more than a ripple overall. What is needed are similar programs at the colleges and universities where the majority of students pursue their education. However as Ehrenberg points out there is a danger in such institutions being more inclusive because these "lesser" colleges and universities face even more risk -both financially and politically- if they follow suit.

The financial resources of such schools are far more limited. As Hill,Winston, and Boyd (in the study of highly selective private colleges and universities already mentioned above) note there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between the net price students from low-income families are asked to pay for their schooling and the size of the endowment per student a particular school has. In the case of schools with much lower endowments per student Ehrenberg notes that they "...do not have the large flow of annual giving and the large endowments that the University of Virginia or the University of Chapel Hill have and thus it will be more difficult for them to develop the resources necessary to support programs such as Access UVA or the Carolina Covenant."

He goes on to point out that "If these flagship institutions are successful in diversifying their student bodies along racial/ethnic and socioeconomic lines, they run the risk of alienating the traditional supporters of their institutions; the upper and middle class families whose children attend high school that have been large feeders schools for them. This may translate into political pressure to reverse policies that led to the diversification, or a further loss of financial support for the public institutions." (Ehrenberg, p. 14). Other schools face the same political problem if students from the families that have typically supported these schools have a more difficult time being admitted into these schools because equally or more deserving students from poorer families have taken their place.

Therefore the current efforts that are being made to make access to higher education more equitable are likely to have less impact than one would hope for or what is needed to really change the way opportunity is distributed. A few cards in the deck are being moved around and most of the aces are still at the top. The entire deck needs to be reshuffled.

Housing prices and news coverage of the subprime crisis.

In an interview with Newsweek's Daniel Gross last week, one of the hosts of NPR's All Things Considered, Robert Siegel, described a hypothetical family that had their home appraised at $300,000 last year. He went on to ask Gross to explain the effect of the value of this family's home falling to $250,000 , rather than rising to $350,000 as they might have expected. Mr. Siegel's line of questioning is typical. We accept the notion that across the country housing prices are falling and falling sharply. Given this, we conclude that consumer spending will weaken in the months ahead, perhaps significantly enough to push the economy into recession. The current situation is serious. On the one end of the spectrum you have poorer families - only recently becoming homeowners- who are now losing their homes. In the face of higher interest rates they are unable to make payments. Banks have either abandoned the subprime market entirely or have tightened their lending standards. Either way, other families who might buy these homes cannot raise the money needed. The two forces combined have led to an increase in foreclosures and a glut of inexpensive homes for sale. Not coincidentally, at the other end of the spectrum, there have been increased requirements for those borrowing to fund the purchase of homes with values well in excess of $400,000. What subprime mortgages and jumbos have in common is that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae refuse to touch them. Borrowers taking out "jumbo mortgages" have typically been asked to pay a minimum of 5% as a downpayment and a premium in interest over what conventional conforming mortgages charged. It is because luxury homes are less liquid (because they are hard to sell quickly without a fairly substantial cut in price) and because of a general desire to limit risk until a clearer picture emerges that lending standards on these sorts of loans have tightened as well. (See "Subprime Mortgage Woes Spreading : Subprime Mortgage Crisis Spreading to High-End Housing Market" AP Wednesday August 29). Therefore the trouble is at the two extremes of the market, where the supply of homes on the market has increased while at the same time, and for the same reasons, the demand for such homes has been depressed. Many banks, formerly in the business of originating these mortgages and then selling them, have seen demand plummet. Where does this leave Mr. Siegel's middle class family with a very nice, fairly new home? They are probably okay. Rather than a home that was worth $300,000 last year selling for only $250,000 today, it would more than likely sell for $308,000-$310,000. (See OFHEO's website) The present crisis as serious as it is, is largely confined to the two extremes of the mortgage market already mentioned. to banks originating such mortgages, and to institutions such as Countrywide that have become more heavily involved in both extremes of the mortgage market. It is an old story, one reminiscent of the junk bond market, where tempted by the higher yields on riskier investments investors convince themselves and others that the market's assessment of risks have been too high. In short, the impact on the consumer spending of middle class America should not be as great as one might imagine. There are if you will several leaks in the roof and serious repairs are needed but the roof is still basically sound and if we patch the roof it should be okay. Pick a different housing price index and you will get a very different number: Estimates of what has happened to housing prices vary enormously. It is indeed confusing. The NAR (National Association of Realtors) suggests that in the second quarter of this year housing prices declined (in fact, NAR sugggests that it is the fourth successive quarter of such declines ). The decline in housing prices according to the NAR number was not as severe as the drop year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2006 when prices fell by their reckoning 2.7% but still in the second quarter of 2007 they were 1.5% lower than a year earlier. According to the Case-Shiller index however in the second quarter of 2007 there was a "record fall" in housing prices in the second quarter of 2007 with prices falling on average by 3.2% between April-June of this year. Finally, the numbers I used to adjust Mr. Siegel's example are based on the housing price index (HPI) reported by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) which indicated that housing prices rose between 2.6% to 3.2 % over this same period of time. The reason for these discrepancies is, of course, due to the fact that each statistic reported includes or excludes different numbers. (For more detail see "Consider the Source" by Lasalle Bank Associate Economist Adolfo Laurenti) Out of the three just mentioned, the Case-Shiller and OFHEO HPI are far more reliable. Both are to be considered to be so because they are paired-sales statistics. This means that it is the price of particular properties that are tracked over time. Other indices, such as the figure given by the NAR are not paired and as a result are sensitive to not only what is happening to the price of homes themselves but to the types of homes being sold. A drop in the NAR statistic could just as readily mean that proportionately more modestly priced homes are being sold than that the price of houses in general are going down. Say that previously 50% of homes being sold over a three month period were sold for $50,000 and 50% for $200,000. If the proportion of homes being sold in the $50,000 range rises it would not take much to generate a huge decline in the average price of homes being sold (a shift to from a 50% to 60% share would cause the average to fall by 12%!). Nonetheless while OFHEO's HPI indicated an increase in hokme prices, Case-Shiller indicated a decline. The difference between Case-Shiller and the OFHEO's HPI can be explained by the fact that the HPI only considers what is happening to the price of homes being purchased with conventional conforming mortgages while Case-Shiller includes jumbo mortgages. In short, the clearest picture we get nationally for the great middle section of the housing market is not a decline. Rather what is happening to the value of many middle class families' homes is that they are still increasing, albeit at a much slower rate (3.2%) than they had over the last five years overall (an annual rate of about 8.5%) So Why Does This Matter? There is first and foremost the impact of of all of this on poorer families that is going largely unreported. (See however the dicussion of turning properties that would otherwise go into foreclosure into rental properties on Marketplace Morning Report September 6th, 2007. Click here ) There is also the fact that the recent crisis has increased the number of individual financial investors who wish to sit on the sidelines with their cash and wait to see if a clearer picture emerges . This flight into liquidity has inadvertently dampened the demand for commerial paper as well as restricting poorer families' access to credit [(1.) For the significance of commercial paper see "Commercial paper market still shrinking: Asset-backed securities fall 15.6% in past three weeks" by Rex Nutting for MarketWatch Aug 30, 2007. (2) For the reasons behind this shift away from commercial paper see "Subprime `Tsunami' Hits Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Market" by Mark Pittman and Elizabeth Stanton for Bloomberg.com August 8, 2007]. What the Fed has done and promises to do is,simply put, a move to provide the extra cash to satisfy an increased desire for liquidity and therefore quite necessary. And President Bush's promise to assist families caught up in the subprime crisis, if sincere, is also a move in the right direction. However, it is debatable in the extreme that the majority of middle class families have anything immediately to fear in terms of falling home prices and higher mortgage interest. In point of fact, Countrywide and other mortgage brokers are trying to redeem themselves financially. They clearly intend to do this by sharply limiting their investments in mortgages that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not purchase: subprime and jumbo mortgages. Middle income households represent the salvation of mortgage lenders as they turn their backs of higher risk, poorer borrowers. (for more click here.) To focus on falling home prices and the possible impact on middle-class consumers diverts our attention away from the real issues involved. For a previous blog on related issues click here.