Measuring Household Water Security for Health and Livelihoods: A Scalable Experiential Metric for Nexus-Oriented Water Policy

Water security is increasingly recognized as a central challenge for sustainable development under global change, requiring policy frameworks that balance domestic needs, livelihoods, environmental sustainability, and climate risk. However, existing approaches to measuring water security face a fundamental trade-off. Resource-based metrics have progressed with the access to satellite data to capture hydrological availability and variability at sub-basin or watershed, but still require extensive data and modeling. In parallel, experiential household-level metrics,  such as the Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale (HWISE) conveys local perceived realities which are shaping welfare and behaviors, yet remain largely confined to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), and other domestic uses, overlooking productive uses, governance, and climate-related risks. This limits their relevance for integrated water resources management and supporting the water–food–energy–ecosystem nexus policies.

This paper presents a new, parsimonious household-level water security module designed to address this gap. Grounded in a widely used conceptual definition of water security encompassing health, livelihoods, ecosystems, and risk, the module captures households’ lived experiences of water insecurity across four domains: (i) domestic water uses, (ii) productive uses supporting agriculture and non-farm activities, (iii) governance and social relations related to water access, and (iv) perceived exposure to climate-related water risks. The short version of the module consists of 13 binary questions and is explicitly designed for integration into large-scale Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS), analogous to experiential food security measurement.

The module was implemented in multiple household surveys in Ghana (2023–2025), with over 2,700 observations from varied livelihood systems: small-reservoir communities, cocoa-growing areas, and mixed rural economies. In addition, a dedicated 2025 survey, about 1,000 households completed both this module and HWISE, enabling direct empirical comparison.

Preliminary findings indicate around half of surveyed households experience water insecurity in at least one domain. An aggregate water security index based on the module demonstrates strong correlations with food security, health outcomes, asset ownership, and household income, emphasizing water access’s centrality to welfare amid climate variability. Disaggregated analysis shows that domestic and productive water insecurity are linked to different socioeconomic outcomes, highlighting the limitations of solely domestic-focused metrics.

The proposed water security index correlates strongly with HWISE, with the strongest alignment in domestic water insecurity (r=0.65) and weaker but still significant correlations for productive (r=0.55) and combined dimensions (r=0.53), indicating substantial convergent validity while capturing additional, non-domestic aspects of water. Moreover, intra-household comparisons suggest broadly similar reported water security experiences among men and women, while pointing to potentially distinct livelihood and wellbeing pathways.

Overall, the proposed module offers a scalable and policy-relevant approach to measuring household water security, bridging experiential metrics and nexus-oriented analysis. By expanding measurement beyond domestic uses to include livelihoods, governance, and climate risk, it offers a more comprehensive understanding of household-level water insecurity and its management. Its strong empirical association with welfare outcomes, combined with its ease of integration into existing surveys, makes it a promising tool for informing integrated water, food, energy, and climate policy under conditions of increasing variability and scarcity.