Mack Elizabeth A, Wrase Sarah
Department of Geography, Environment & Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America.
Department of Accounting & Information Systems, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2017 Jan 11;12(1):e0169488. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169488. eCollection 2017.
While basic access to clean water is critical, another important issue is the affordability of water access for people around the globe. Prior international work has highlighted that a large proportion of consumers could not afford water if priced at full cost recovery levels. Given growing concern about affordability issues due to rising water rates, and a comparative lack of work on affordability in the developed world, as compared to the developing world, more work is needed in developed countries to understand the extent of this issue in terms of the number of households and persons impacted. To address this need, this paper assesses potential affordability issues for households in the United States using the U.S. EPA's 4.5% affordability criteria for combined water and wastewater services. Analytical results from this paper highlight high-risk and at-risk households for water poverty or unaffordable water services. Many of these households are clustered in pockets of water poverty within counties, which is a concern for individual utility providers servicing a large proportion of customers with a financial inability to pay for water services. Results also highlight that while water rates remain comparatively affordable for many U.S. households, this trend will not continue in the future. If water rates rise at projected amounts over the next five years, conservative projections estimate that the percentage of U.S. households who will find water bills unaffordable could triple from 11.9% to 35.6%. This is a concern due to the cascading economic impacts associated with widespread affordability issues; these issues mean that utility providers could have fewer customers over which to spread the large fixed costs of water service. Unaffordable water bills also impact customers for whom water services are affordable via higher water rates to recover the costs of services that go unpaid by lower income households.
虽然基本的清洁水供应至关重要，但另一个重要问题是全球各地人们获得水的可承受能力。先前的国际研究强调，如果水价按照完全成本回收水平定价，很大一部分消费者将无力承担。鉴于水价上涨引发了对可承受能力问题的日益关注，而且与发展中世界相比，发达国家在可承受能力方面的研究相对较少，因此发达国家需要开展更多工作，以了解受此问题影响的家庭和人口数量。为满足这一需求，本文使用美国环境保护局（U.S. EPA）针对供水和污水处理服务的4.5%可承受能力标准，评估了美国家庭潜在的可承受能力问题。本文的分析结果突出了面临水贫困或无力承担供水服务风险的高风险和有风险家庭。其中许多家庭集中在各县的水贫困地区，这对于为很大一部分无力支付供水服务费用的客户提供服务的个别公用事业公司来说是一个担忧。结果还表明，虽然许多美国家庭的水价仍相对可承受，但这种趋势在未来不会持续。如果水价在未来五年内按预计金额上涨，保守估计，发现水费难以承受的美国家庭比例可能从11.9%增至35.6%，增长两倍。这令人担忧，因为广泛的可承受能力问题会带来连锁经济影响；这些问题意味着公用事业公司的客户数量可能减少，从而难以分摊供水服务的巨大固定成本。难以承受的水费还会通过提高水价来弥补低收入家庭未支付的服务成本，进而影响那些能够承受水费的客户。
