Embedded Files
Water Treatment and E. Coli in Drinking Water: Household Responses to (Invisible) Water Quality Risks with Sujey Soori. PLOS One, 2026.
Households are only 5 percentage points more likely to treat water even when facing high-risk (>100 CFU) contamination.
In 2024, around 4 billion people worldwide still lacked access to safely managed drinking water, leaving many families — especially young children — exposed to serious health risks. This study investigates how often household water sources are contaminated with E. coli, a key indicator of fecal contamination, and whether families respond by treating their water.
Using nationally representative data from nearly 60,000 households across 25 low- and middle-income countries, the study finds that water contamination is common, yet most households do not treat their drinking water. Even when E. coli is present, treatment rates increase only slightly. Strikingly, many households that report treating their water still have contaminated stored water, suggesting that treatment practices may be inconsistent or ineffective.
These findings highlight an important challenge: because microbial contamination is invisible, families may not fully respond to the risks they face.
The Dynamic Relationship between Migration, Family Planning, and Fertility in Nepal with Rebecca Thornton, and Dirgha Ghimire.
High-frequency monthly data reveal the hidden dynamics of migration, intimacy, and family planning in Nepal
This study looks at how husbands’ migration affects family planning and childbirth decisions in Nepal. Using detailed monthly data collected over 16 years, the researchers followed more than 4,000 married women whose husbands periodically left home for work.
The results show clear behavioral changes. Women tend to increase their use of short-term contraception just before their husbands leave, then reduce use after the departure. A similar pattern appears when husbands return: contraceptive use rises before reunification and remains higher afterward. These responses are especially strong when separations are shorter and among women who already have children.
The study also finds shifts in birth patterns, with more births occurring shortly before or several months after husbands return. Overall, the findings reveal that families actively adjust reproductive decisions around migration, highlighting dynamics that are often missed in standard annual data.
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