<p>More than 1 billion people in developing countries lack access to safe water and sanitation. Drinking water in these countries is often collected from unsafe sources outside the home. Even piped well water in the developing world can be unsafe due to inadequately maintained pipes, low pressure, intermittent delivery, lack of chlorination, and clandestine connections. Furthermore, drinking water often becomes contaminated after collection, either during transport or during storage in the home. Improvements in water supply, hygiene education and safe storage can reduce the spread of waterborne diseases, such as diarrhoea. However it is not an easy task to combat unsafe drinking water, and several factors have to be taken into account. Correct management of water at the household level is a vital factor in reducing contamination of water in areas where water is not available in the home, and often has to be transported for long distances before storage.</p><p>It is often a woman's responsibility to collect and store water. The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of women’s knowledge and perceptions of the risks associated with drinking water and waterborne diseases in Babati, Tanzania. Furthermore, the study sets out to investigate the methods utilized at the household-level to prevent waterborne diseases. Interviews were the key method to collecting primary data and the results present findings from 20 women in two villages in Babati. All of the respondents had access to community water pipes but none had taps in their household. Among the respondents who treated their water, the most common method of treatment was boiling. The study shows that there is a link between lived experience, perceptions of risk, and the way water is managed in the household.</p>

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More than 1 billion people in developing countries lack access to safe water and sanitation. Drinking water in these countries is often collected from unsafe sources outside the home. Even piped well water in the developing world can be unsafe due to inadequately maintained pipes, low pressure, intermittent delivery, lack of chlorination, and clandestine connections. Furthermore, drinking water often becomes contaminated after collection, either during transport or during storage in the home. Improvements in water supply, hygiene education and safe storage can reduce the spread of waterborne diseases, such as diarrhoea. However it is not an easy task to combat unsafe drinking water, and several factors have to be taken into account. Correct management of water at the household level is a vital factor in reducing contamination of water in areas where water is not available in the home, and often has to be transported for long distances before storage. It is often a woman's responsibility to collect and store water. The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of women’s knowledge and perceptions of the risks associated with drinking water and waterborne diseases in Babati, Tanzania. Furthermore, the study sets out to investigate the methods utilized at the household-level to prevent waterborne diseases. Interviews were the key method to collecting primary data and the results present findings from 20 women in two villages in Babati. All of the respondents had access to community water pipes but none had taps in their household. Among the respondents who treated their water, the most common method of treatment was boiling. The study shows that there is a link between lived experience, perceptions of risk, and the way water is managed in the household.

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The dissertation consists of four self-contained essays on consumption. Essays 1 and 2 consider different measures of aggregate consumption, and Essays 3 and 4 consider how the distributions of income and wealth affect consumption from a macro and micro perspective, respectively. Essay 1 considers the empirical practice of seemingly interchangeable use of two measures of consumption; total consumption expenditure and consumption expenditure on nondurable goods and services. Using data from Sweden and the US in an error correction model, it is shown that consumption functions based on the two measures exhibit significant differences in several aspects of econometric modelling. Essay 2, coauthored with Thomas Holgersson, considers derivation of a univariate and a multivariate version of a test for asymmetry, based on the third central moment. The logic behind the test is that the dependent variable should correspond to the specification of the econometric model; symmetric with linear models and asymmetric with non-linear models. The main result in the empirical application of the test is that orthodox theory seems to be supported for consumption of both nondurable and durable consumption. The consumption of durables shows little deviation from symmetry in the four-country sample, while the consumption of nondurables is shown to be asymmetric in two out of four cases, the UK and the US. Essay 3 departs from the observation that introducing income uncertainty makes the consumption function concave, implying that the distributions of wealth and income are omitted variables in aggregate Euler equations. This implication is tested through estimation of the distributions over time and augmentation of consumption functions, using Swedish data for 1963-2000. The results show that only the dispersion of wealth is significant, the explanation of which is found in the marked changes of the group of households with negative wealth; a group that according to a concave consumption function has the highest marginal propensity to consume. Essay 4 attempts to empirically specify the nature of the alleged concavity of the consumption function. Using grouped household level Swedish data for 1999-2001, it is shown that the marginal propensity to consume out of current resources, i.e. current income and net wealth, is strictly decreasing in current resources and net wealth, but approximately constant in income. Also, an empirical reciprocal to the stylized theoretical consumption function is estimated, and shown to bear a close resemblance to the theoretical version.