Beyond the Bill: A Research Agenda for Understanding Post‐Pandemic Water Utility Shutoffs and Household Debt in the United States

ABSTRACT

Water service disconnections and household debt reflect the intersection of residential affordability, utility finance, and household well‐being but remain poorly understood due to fragmented and inconsistent data. This paper synthesizes existing evidence on residential water disconnections and on‐bill debt in the United States, with an emphasis on post‐pandemic policy shifts and emerging administrative data sources. We argue that water service disconnections reflect a combination of affordability constraints, utility policies and practices, and customer payment behavior. These factors shape when and why disconnections occur, with implications for household well‐being and utility financial sustainability. Addressing the seemingly ubiquitous goal of affordable water service therefore requires grappling not only with the level of bills relative to household income, but also more direct engagement with the institutional practice of disconnections and debt recovery. We thus identify key gaps in understanding the causal effects of enforcement strategies, assistance programs, communication interventions, and debt recovery mechanisms, and propose a set of testable hypotheses for advancing knowledge.