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COVID‐19 has revived focus on improving equitable access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and health services in developing countries. Most public programming tends to rely on economic indicators to identify and target vulnerable groups. Can expanded targeting criteria that include social status help to improve not only targeting, but also equity in access to WASH and health services?

This article assesses the role of social identity in mediating access to WASH and health services, controlling for economic disadvantages such as household wealth, income sources, and assets.

We use regression analysis applied to the 2016 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) to estimate the relationships between social identity and access to WASH and health services, controlling for wealth (using wealth index quantiles) and remittances (using indicator …