Economic evaluation and priority setting in water and sanitation interventions

There is always a need to weigh up costs against benefits and in doing so one of the more difficult problems is to come up with a monetary measure for different benefits. This chapter examines some of the instruments available to guide priority-setting and their use in assessing water and sanitation interventions.

The general aim of this chapter is to assess the applicability of a recently developed and widely supported economic evaluation framework to appraise alternative water and sanitation interventions, and make recommendations for those wishing to conduct economic evaluations in this area.