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Sunass Study Finds Universal Water and Sanitation Would Cut Peru’s Multidimensional Poverty

An accounting simulation projects the largest gains in rural areas, noting steep connection costs and disordered urban growth limit rapid roll-out.

Overview

  • Sunass’s Cami Yaku analysis published Wednesday shows universal potable water and sanitation would lower national multidimensional poverty from 39.7% to about 34.0%, a drop of roughly 5.66 percentage points.
  • The simulated impact is strongest in rural areas, where incidence would fall from about 78.9% to 69.9%, a reduction of roughly 9.02 percentage points.
  • The study finds roughly 2.6 million people who are not poor by income still lack potable water, underlining that income measures miss many basic-service shortfalls.
  • Sunass stresses the results are an accounting exercise that removes water and sanitation deprivations while holding other deficits constant and does not forecast how fast change would occur in practice.
  • Practical barriers identified include per-connection costs that can reach S/90,000 in peri-urban or high-altitude sites, population shifts toward the coast, and disordered urban expansion, all of which raise the price and technical difficulty of universalization.