Research reveals over 1.1 million city folks in US stay in houses with out correct indoor plumbing

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OK! Map of households without piped water access in the United States, 2013-2017. Note: Lighter areas indicate areas with a higher number of households without piped water. There are clusters of sanitation facilities in major cities and certain regions across the country. Photo credit: Katie Meehan.

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Map of households without piped water access in the United States, 2013-2017. Note: Lighter areas indicate areas with a higher number of households without piped water. There are clusters of sanitation facilities in major cities and certain regions across the country. Photo credit: Katie Meehan.

A team of researchers from King's College London, the University of Arizona and ECONorthwest has found that an estimated 1.1 million urban residents in the United States live in homes without proper indoor plumbing. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis of census data for 50 of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. and what they learned about people living without standard indoor plumbing and related amenities.

In advanced countries such as the United States, most people are assumed to have basic amenities such as access to clean water and related facilities. In this new effort, researchers have found that this is not the case for many people living in some of the country's largest cities. In reality, many people, especially minorities, live indoors without proper plumbing.

The work involved analyzing data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal agency that conducts nationwide surveys every ten years. To learn more about access to running water, researchers focused on data from whether people had access to “full sanitation,” meaning a bath or shower. They found that for about 500,000 households in large urban areas, the answer was no.

Analyzing the data further, the researchers found that about 1.1 million people lived in such households. They also found a connection between a given city's wealth gap and the number of people living without running water. For example, they found that percent-wealthy cities like San Francisco, Portland and Austin had some of the highest rates of what they call plumbing poverty. Using raw numbers, they found that New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco had the most people living in plumbing poverty. They also found that race played a role. On average, blacks were 35 percent more likely to live in plumbing poverty than whites. They also found that sanitation poverty was most commonly found in rented facilities, particularly mobile homes.

More information:
Meehan et al., Geographies of insecure water access and housing-water connectivity in US cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2007361117

Magazine information:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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