Empirical Analysis of Ghanaian Household Sources of Domestic Drinking Water

Abstract

This descriptive study looks at the sources of domestic drinking water, rankings, and correlations in Ghanaian households for 41,510 respondents using data from the most recent Ghana Statistical Service Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES). The competitive demand between the first three primary sources of household domestic drinking water, which together account for 68.4 percent of Ghana's total primary sources of household domestic drinking water, has been shown by the Spearman correlation analysis. The estimates are all significant at the five percent level of statistical significance. and indicate the need for immediate, efficient management and governance of the joint demand of these three domestic drinking water sources in order to improve domestic water security by encouraging for unit cost reduction through economies of scale. Increasing the production and demand for Ghana's other 13 minor sources of domestic drinking water, which make up around 32 percent of all domestic water sources, must be a national priority in order to ensure domestic water security by reducing household over-reliance on just the three dominant sources as more pro-poor policies are put into place in the medium term.