Millions of people around the world have no access to sanitation. They defecate in the open, or in facilities where it’s hard to avoid human contact, unavoidably spreading disease. One of the Sustainable Development Goals that you don’t hear about so much is the call to end open defecation by 2030. What progress are we making, and what health improvements are we seeing so far? In the latest of our episodes based on J-PAL’s policy insights, Karen Macours of the Paris School of Economics, also co-chair of J-PAL's Health Sector, tells Tim Phillips about how we can achieve this development goal, why it’s not a quick fix, and the surprising results of research into the health benefits of improving sanitation.

Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/health/improving-sanitation-what-works-and-what-doesnt

Read the Policy Insight on J-PAL: https://www.povertyactionlab.org/policy-insight/improving-sanitation-access-subsidies-loans-and-community-led-programs