Like in many developing countries, diarrheal diseases remain a top cause of child
mortality and morbidity in the Philippines. Partly to address this problem, the government has
undertaken programs to expand access to safe water and sanitation facilities, especially among
poor households. To assess the impact of such interventions on child health, we apply propensity
score matching technique on the pooled data from the last five rounds of the National
Demographic and Health Survey. We find that improved water and improved sanitation each
reduced the probability of child diarrhea in 1993-2008 by around two percentage points. In 2013,
improved water reduced the probability by about 7 percentage points, while improved sanitation
do not seem to have statistically significant effect. These results lend support to the
government’s programs to widen access to safe water and sanitation facilities as measures to
improve child health.