Drought, women’s time poverty, and the development costs of water collection in Sub-Saharan Africa

Drought can impose development costs that are not fully captured by income, production, or formal water access indicators. This paper examines one such hidden cost in Sub-Saharan Africa by focusing on women’s time poverty arising from household water collection. Combining harmonized Demographic and Health Surveys with geocoded drought exposure measured at the survey cluster level, we estimate how local drought conditions are associated with women’s annual water collection burden and broader household adjustments. We find that drought exposure is associated with higher water-collection time for women, with larger estimated increases among women living in poor households, women with no formal education, and women living in households without piped-water access. Intermediate-outcome evidence shows that drought is associated with lower local water availability and a higher likelihood of very long collection trips, particularly journeys exceeding 60 minutes. These water-time burdens are also associated with greater engagement in flexible, household-based, family-based, and self-employed forms of work among women rather than with a simple expansion of protected paid employment. In addition, higher community water burdens are associated with poorer schooling outcomes among girls, including a greater likelihood of being out of school and larger grade-for-age gaps. Household-linked evidence further shows that poorer girls’ schooling outcomes are associated with larger household shares of adult women in unpaid or in-kind work, self-employment, and family work. The findings suggest that drought-related water insecurity can redistribute adaptation costs within households, making women’s unpaid time a key margin through which climate stress produces hidden development costs.