Urban development-induced redevelopment of informal settlement water kiosks and women's collective water-purchasing arrangements in Nairobi: a difference-in-differences estimation of kiosk-removal exposure

Redevelopment of informal settlements in Nairobi has repeatedly displaced the small water kiosks through which residents buy water in small quantities, and the women who organise collective purchases around those kiosks are the group most exposed to the resulting change in price, distance and reliability. The design specifies treatment as a compound exposure combining kiosk closure, distance to the nearest surviving kiosk and the loss of a trusted vendor relationship, and it specifies outcomes at the level of the purchasing group: group survival, contribution frequency, purchase size and the composition of the group's membership. Identification rests on comparing groups whose kiosks were removed by redevelopment with groups whose kiosks were scheduled for removal but not yet removed, conditional on pre-exposure trends in group activity. It contributes a transferable specification for a class of infrastructure shocks that are common across African cities and rarely estimated at the level of the collective arrangement.