Table 1.
Summary of key dimensions for the development of affordability ratios.
Table 2.
Summary statistics for water bills and income data in affordability study sample and full community water system list for 2015.
Table 3.
Summary statistics for affordability ratios and household poverty indices estimated at the community water system scale (n = 1,501) for 2015‡.
Fig 1.
Box plots for crude (unadjusted) affordability ratios across income levels, by systems size.
Affordability ratios (AR) estimate monthly water bills for 6 HCF relative to three income levels: ARMHI = median household income level; ARCP = county poverty level; and ARDP = deep poverty level. Highest value for ARDP (45.85%) not shown for readability. Long dashed lines represent common thresholds for households earning median household incomes within a water system–1.5% [34] and 2.5% [54]. Dot-dashed lines represent the commonly referenced 3% threshold–which compares water bills (sometimes including sanitation) to income (often disposable income) [57, 59].
Table 4.
Crude and adjusted mean affordability ratios by system size, for 2015‡.
Table 5.
Percentage of households at or below county poverty level and deep poverty level across systems in sample (n = 1501) and full community water system list with system boundaries (n = 2882), for 2015‡.
Fig 2.
Percentage of households below county poverty threshold (HHCP) vs. affordability ratio at county poverty threshold (ARCP), by community water system size (n = 1,501).
Color fill shows the number of systems in each hexagon. Strip text above plots indicate community water system size by population served: very small = 25–500 people; small = 501–3,300 people; medium = 3,301–10,000 people; large = 10,000+ people.