Household Water Security in Low-Income Rural and Peri-Urban Communities in South Texas

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Social scientists recently exposed the myth of universal water services coverage in the United States: migrant farm workers, the rural poor, and urban homeless communities face substantial deficiencies in water and sanitation infrastructure. Although institutional and location factors are thought to explain limited water and sanitation services, scholars have overlooked two key aspects of the water-poverty problem: (1) access to water infrastructure does not guarantee water security, which is defined as adequate, reliable, and affordable water and sanitation for a healthy life; and (2) considerable water security variability exists within low-income communities. Dr. Wendy Jepson at Texas A & M University will fill these gaps by examining household water security variability in low-income Mexican-American communities in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, one of the poorest regions with the largest population lacking suitable water supply and basic sanitation in the United States. The project will be executed in three parts. First, the PI and her research team will conduct household case studies, group interviews, and semi-structured interviews to describe the meaning and experience of household water security in colonias, low-income rural and peri-urban communities. Second, they will use information gathered in the first part of the project to develop and pretest a household water security survey instrument. Pre-testing and respondent evaluations will allow researchers to revise the survey for full implementation. Third, they will administer survey instrument and analyze results. Descriptive analysis and multivariate relationships with predictors will be assessed using standard statistical analysis, and hypothesis testing will be conducted. These data will enable the identification of the variables that predict different levels of water insecurity, relationships between the degree of water insecurity and household characteristics, and relationships between the degree of water insecurity and type of water service provider. This project will provide the basis for new empirical discoveries and advance conceptual innovations related to water security in low-income communities in the United States. Project outcomes include a new survey instrument that could be applied in other low-income areas where substantial water and sanitation deficiencies exist. In addition, the project changes the current understanding of water-poverty problems from 'infrastructure' at a regional scale to 'water security' at a household scale. The focus on the household as the unit of analysis allows for fine-grained assessments of a broad array of water and sanitation issues, incorporating physical, relational and behavioral dimensions of water deficiency. Therefore, expected research results will advance current knowledge about water and poverty, transform policy and social scientific study about poverty and water, and provide scientifically informed recommendations to improve the human condition of economically excluded groups in the United States.