Making drinking water clean
The permanent way to prevent diarrhea from killing an average of 4,000 children a day worldwide would be for governments to step in and provide safe, clean water for their people to drink. But that prospect appears to be years away. In the meantime, Harvard economist Michael Kremer is among those working on alternative solutions, conducting research and allying with nongovernmental organizations to develop systems that are effective and that people will use. Kremer, Gates Professor of Developing Societies, described his efforts and provided an overview of recent research on the topic of safe water during a talk Tuesday at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Part of the institute’s water series, Kremer’s talk took the audience from urban Morocco, where a key study examining links between water access and health took place, to rural Kenya, where Kremer’s own research has centered on chlorination of rural water sources. There are several challenges regarding...