section_path: Characteristics/Utilities/Water and sanitation
section_name: Water and sanitation
paragraph_text: Water and sanitation
  
  As of 2012, 2.5 billion people lack access to sanitation services and 15% practice open defecation. Even while providing latrines is a challenge, people still do not use them even when available. Bangladesh had half the GDP per capita of India but has a lower mortality from diarrhea than India or the world average, with diarrhea deaths declining by 90% since the 1990s. By strategically providing pit latrines to the poorest, charities in Bangladesh sparked a cultural change as those better off perceived it as an issue of status to not use one. The vast majority of the latrines built were then not from charities but by villagers themselves.
  
  Water utility subsidies tend to subsidize water consumption by those connected to the supply grid, which is typically skewed towards the richer and urban segment of the population and those outside informal housing. As a result of heavy consumption subsidies, the price of water decreases to the extent that only 30%, on average, of the supplying costs in developing countries is covered. This results in a lack of incentive to maintain delivery systems, leading to losses from leaks annually that are enough for 200 million people. This also leads to a lack of incentive to invest in expanding the network, resulting in much of the poor population being unconnected to the network. Instead, the poor buy water from water vendors for, on average, about 5 to 16 times the metered price. However, subsidies for laying new connections to the network rather than for consumption have shown more promise for the poor.