Dataset Information

Geographies of insecure water access and the housing-water nexus in US cities.

ABSTRACT: Safe, reliable, and equitable water access is critical to human health and livelihoods. In the United States, an estimated 471,000 households or 1.1 million individuals lack a piped water connection and 73% of households are located in cities, close to networked supply. In this study, we undertake a nationwide analysis of urban water access in the United States, with the aim of explaining the drivers of infrastructural inequality in the 50 largest metropolitan areas. Drawing on statistical analysis and regression modeling of census microdata at the household scale, our analysis reveals spatial and sociodemographic patterns of racialized, class-based, and housing disparities that characterize plumbing poverty. Among unplumbed households, we show that households headed by people of color are almost 35% more likely to lack piped water as compared to white, non-Hispanic households. Precarious housing conditions are an equally strong predictor: Renter-occupied households in the 50 largest US metros were 1.61 times more likely than owner-occupied households to lack piped water. We argue that insecure domestic water access in the United States should be understood as a housing issue that reflects structural inequalities of race and class, particularly in cities with widening wealth gaps. The article concludes with a call for research and action at the intersection of water provision, housing, and social inequality-a paradigm we call the housing-water nexus.

SUBMITTER: Meehan K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7682390 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Geographies of insecure water access and the housing-water nexus in US cities.

Meehan Katie K Jurjevich Jason R JR Chun Nicholas M J W NMJW Sherrill Justin J

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20201102 46

Safe, reliable, and equitable water access is critical to human health and livelihoods. In the United States, an estimated 471,000 households or 1.1 million individuals lack a piped water connection and 73% of households are located in cities, close to networked supply. In this study, we undertake a nationwide analysis of urban water access in the United States, with the aim of explaining the drivers of infrastructural inequality in the 50 largest metropolitan areas. Drawing on statistical analy ...[more]

PMID: 33139547

Similar Datasets

Project description:Household water food and energy (WFE) expenditures, reflect respective survival needs for which their resources and social welfare are inter-related. We developed a policy driven quantitative decision-making strategy (DMS) to address the domain geospatial entities' (nodes or administrative districts) of the WFE nexus, assumed to be information linked across the domain nodal-network. As investment in one of the inter-dependent nexus components may cause unexpected shock to the others, we refer to the WFE normalized expenditures product (Volume) as representing the nexus holistic measure. Volume rate conforms to Boltzman entropy suggesting directed information from high to low Volume nodes. Our hypothesis of causality-driven directional information is exemplified by a sharp price increase in wheat and rice, for U.S. and Thailand respectively, that manifests its impact on the temporal trend of Israel's administrative districts of the WFE expenditures. Welfare mass (WM) represents the node's Volume combined with its income and population density. Formulation is suggested for the nodal-network WM temporal balance where each node is scaled by a human-factor (HF) for subjective attitude and a superimposed nodal source/sink term manifesting policy decision. Our management tool is based on two sequential governance processes: one starting with historical data mapping the mean temporal nodal Volumes to single out extremes, and the second is followed by WM balance simulation predicting nodal-network outcome of policy driven targeting. In view of the proof of concept by model simulations in in our previous research, here HF extends the model and attention is devoted to emphasize how the current developed decision-making approach categorically differs from existing nexus related methods. The first governance process is exemplified demonstrating illustrations for Israel's districts. Findings show higher expenditures for water and lower for energy, and maps pointing to extremes in districts' mean temporal Volume. Illustrations of domain surfaces for that period enable assessment of relative inclination trends of the normalized Water, Food and Energy directions continuum assembled from time stations, and evolution trends for each of the WFE components.

Dataset Information

Geographies of insecure water access and the housing-water nexus in US cities.

Publications

Geographies of insecure water access and the housing-water nexus in US cities.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets