Progress on household drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene 2000-2024: Special focus on inequalities

Overview

Between 2000 and 2024, the global population increased from 6.2 billion to 8.2 billion. Over this period, a quarter of the world’s population (2.2 billion) gained access to safely managed drinking water, and a third (2.8 billion) gained safely managed sanitation. But while billions have gained access to WASH services, progress has been uneven and the total number of people still lacking access has decreased more slowly.  

The distribution of unserved populations has also changed since 2015. While the total population lacking safely managed drinking water services has declined, the number of people without has actually increased in urban areas and in low-income countries. The population lacking safely managed sanitation has decreased rapidly in rural areas but only marginally in urban areas, and has increased in low-income countries. The population lacking basic hygiene services has decreased twice as fast in rural areas than in urban areas. It has increased in low-income countries (from 427 million to 502 million) and decreased in lower-middle-income countries (from 1.2 billion to 729 million). There were insufficient hygiene data in upper-middle-income and high-income countries to produce complete estimates by income group.