Skip to main content

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

August 2025
Report cover with boy in wheelchair filling jerrycan with water from a public tap
Download the full report
Brief summary

This data-driven JMP progress report presents global trends in household drinking water, sanitation, hygiene, and menstrual health from 2000 to 2024. It tracks progress toward SDG targets and highlights persistent inequalities across regions, income groups, and demographic characteristics. The report incorporates expanded datasets and new indicators, offering clearer insights into service disparities, fragile contexts, and menstrual health needs.

Report highlights

Between 2000 and 2024, the global population rose from 6.2 to 8.2 billion. Over this period, about a quarter of the population (2.2 billion) gained access to safely managed drinking water and a third (2.8 billion) to safely managed sanitation. Yet progress has been uneven and the number of people left behind has fallen more slowly. Since 2015, the distribution of the unserved has shifted: the proportion of the population with sanitation services has risen quickly in rural areas while staying relatively flat in urban areas. However, in terms of raw numbers most of the gains have been realized in urban areas. Basic hygiene access has improved, especially in rural areas; and the share of people unserved has increasingly concentrated in low-income countries.

  • Achieving the 2030 targets for safely managed services is increasingly out of reach

    Graphs showing historical rates of progress and projections to 2030 for drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services
  • The population without WASH services is declining except in urban areas and low-income countries

    Bar charts showing WASH services in 2015 and 2024, disaggregated by urban/rural status and income group
  • Inadequate access to drinking water

    2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water

    Despite gains since 2015, 1 in 4 – or 2.1 billion people globally – still lack access to safely managed drinking water, including 106 million who drink directly from untreated surface sources.

Scroll, swipe or use the arrow keys for more.

Report type
Monitoring category
Download the full report