Water Afar Off Quenches Not Thirst? The Health Benefits of the South–North Water Transfer Project in China

Abstract

This paper is the first to estimate the health benefits of the largest inter-basin water diversion project in the world, namely, the Chinese South–North Water Transfer (SNWT) project. Using detailed household-level data, we exploit the natural experimental setting of the middle route of SNWT to implement a difference in discontinuity design. We find that SNWT reduced the incidences of waterborne diseases and cancer by more than 25% and 16%, respectively. The cost-benefit analysis shows that the health benefits outweigh the construction costs in 4–10 years, which highlights the importance of water transfer infrastructure for sustainable develop ment in arid regions.