OPEN DEFECATION IN NIGER: A BOX-JENKINS ARIMA APPROACH

Economics

Using annual time series data on the number of people who practice open defecation in Niger from 2000 – 2017, the study predicts the annual number of people who will still be practicing open defecation over the period 2018 – 2022. This research applies the Box-Jenkins ARIMA methodology. The diagnostic ADF tests show that the ODG series under consideration is an I (1) variable. Based on the AIC, the study presents the ARIMA (1, 1, 0) model as the best model. The diagnostic tests further point to the notion that the presented forecasting model is indeed stable and its residuals are stationary in levels. The results of the study indicate that the number of people practicing open defecation in Niger will slightly decline over the period 2018 – 2022, from 67% to 63% of the total population. This means that over the out-of-sample period, the number of open defecators in Niger is expected to fall by approximately 4%. Clearly, open defecation will definitely remain one of the major public health issues in Niger in future unless more serious sanitation and hygiene policies are effectively implemented in the country. In order to help improve the effectiveness of already existing Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) policy frameworks, the study suggested a four-fold policy recommendation to be put into consideration, especially by the government of Niger.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.