Abstract
Childhood is the most important developmental phase of an individual’s life and is significantly influenced by one’s environment. A key influencer of development is access to clean water. Access has improved drastically since the dawn of democracy in South Africa. However little focus has been afforded to three key factors related to access, source of water, how far households must travel to gain access and the quality of water households receive. Using data from the 2006 and 2011 South African General Household, comparisons of households with and without children under the age of 5 are made. Findings note overall improvements; however households with children under the age of 5 years continue to experience lower levels of service delivery. As we transition to a new era, post-Millennium Development Goals, the developmental objectives need to be viewed holistically to ensure the essence of development is met.
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Notes
- 1.
This relationship is statistically significant at the 95 % confidence interval with a Chi squared p-value of 0.00.
- 2.
There exists a statistically significant relationship between province and access to piped water at the 95 % confidence interval with a Chi squared p-value of 0.00.
- 3.
The difference in percentage is statistically significant at the 95 % significance level with a Chi Squared p-value of 0.00.
- 4.
These relationships are independently significant at the 95 % levels of significance with p values of 0.00.
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Timol, F. (2015). Dimension of Childhood Development Within the Millennium Development Goals: The Role of Water-Related Characteristics in Reducing the Burden of Childhood Diseases in South Africa. In: Andrews, N., Khalema, N., Assié-Lumumba, N. (eds) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Retrospect. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 58. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16166-2_12
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