Visualizations

This metric represents the ratio of households with access to piped water in their homes. Because many household surveys do not include metrics about temporal availability or water quality, counting under this metric does not necessarily mean that the household has improved water access.

Some countries do not ask questions in their household surveys that allow researchers to differentiate between access to piped water on the plot and access to piped water in the house. In cases where the location of piped access could not be determined, this metric was calculated as null and households with piped water were included under the access to piped water on plot metric. These cases include:

• Colombia
• Panama

This metric represents the ratio of households with access to piped water on their plot. Because many household surveys do not include metrics about temporal availability or water quality, counting under this metric does not necessarily mean that the household has improved water access.

Some countries do not ask questions in their household surveys that allow researchers to differentiate between access to piped water on the plot and access to piped water in the house. In cases where the location of piped access could not be determined, this metric was included under this metric. These cases include:

• Colombia
• Panama

This metric represents the ratio of households with access to an improved water source other than a piped water source. These sources include boreholes or tubewells, protected dug wells, protected springs, rainwater, and packaged and delivered water.

Household surveys often don’t include enough information to determine if a spring or well is sufficiently protected, so as the upper bound, this metric is calculated assuming that they are. Countries that collect sufficient information in their household survey to really understand if the water source is improved are Bolivia, El Salvador, Paraguay, and Uruguay

Countries that provide a good amount of specificity but lack information about springs or whether the source is protected are:

• Honduras, which has good specificity but doesn't specifically mention protected wells
• Panama, which doesn't include springs

Most other countries lack the specificity to determine if a non-piped source truly is improved or not. Many household surveys do not include metrics about temporal availability or water quality, so including a household under this metric does not necessarily mean that the household has improved water access.

This indicator represents the percent of the population with access to a toilet connected to a municipal sewer system. These sanitation facilities could be shared with other families or exclusive to the household surveyed. All countries included in the OLAS Country Surveys dataset ask about toilet access, but and Panama does not ask if the toilet is connected to the sewer or a septic system. In this case, all households with toilets were assumed to be connected to a septic system.

Throughout LAC, urban populations generally have high level of access to sanitations facilities connected to sewer systems, while urban communities generally have low levels of access.

This indicator represents the proportion of households with access to sanitation facilities connected to a septic system. Throughout LAC these numbers are generally higher for rural populations that do not have access to municipal sewer systems. These sanitation facilities could be shared with other families or exclusive to the household surveyed. All countries included in the OLAS Country Surveys dataset ask about toilet access, but Panama does not ask if the toilet is connected to the sewer or a septic system. In this case, all households with toilets were assumed to be connected to a septic system.

This indicator represents the percent of the population with access to an improved latrine using a generous definition of “improved”. According to the UNs Joint Monitoring Program, improved latrines include pit latrines with a slab or platform and composting toilets. Hanging latrines, bucket latrines, or latrines without slabs or platforms are considered unimproved.

There is wide variation within LAC with respect to how questions about latrine use are formulated on country household surveys, with some countries asking very detailed questions, while others formulate questions in a way that does not allow analysts to distinguish between improved and unimproved. This indicator takes a wide definition of improved latrines, wherein anything that was not explicitly stated to be an unimproved latrine was assumed to be improved. Generally, throughout LAC latrines are ubiquitous among rural populations and less common in urban settings.

Mexico and Uruguay do not specifically differentiate between whether a household has access to a toilet vs a latrine, so households from these countries are classified as having toilet access connected to either sewer or toilet depending on household responses to the other survey questions.