Safe and secure water is a cornerstone of modern life in the global North. This article critically examines a set of prevalent myths about household water in high‐income countries, with a focus on Canada and the United States. Taking a relational approach, we argue that household water insecurity is a product of institutionalized structures and power, manifests unevenly through space and time, and is reproduced in places we tend to assume are the most water‐secure in the world. We first briefly introduce “modern water” and the modern infrastructural ideal, a highly influential set of ideas that have shaped household water provision and infrastructure development over the past two centuries. Against this backdrop, we consolidate evidence to disrupt a set of narratives about water in high‐income countries: the notion that water access is universal, clean, affordable, trustworthy, and uniformly or equitably governed. We identify five thematic areas of future research to delineate an agenda for advancing scholarship and action—including challenges of legal and regulatory regimes, the housing‐water nexus, water affordability, and water quality and contamination. Data gaps underpin the experiences of household water insecurity. Taken together, our review of water security for households in high‐income countries provides a conceptual map to direct critical research in this area for the coming years.This article is categorized under: Human Water > Human Water

Significance: Secure water access is a fundamental human right. Our study reveals disparities in piped water access in urban areas in the United States. From 2013 to 2017, we find that an estimated 1,121,100 people (±25,500) in the United States had insecure water access, with nearly one-half (47%) located in the 50 largest metropolitan areas. Unplumbed households in cities, on balance, are more likely to be headed by people of color, earn lower incomes, live in mobile homes, rent their residence, and pay a higher share of their gross income toward housing costs. We offer clear evidence that gaps in urban water access are neither random nor accidental but underpinned by precarious housing conditions and systemic social and racialized inequality.

Household water insecurity is a global threat to human health and development, yet existing metrics lack a systematic consideration of geographic inequality and spatial variation. In this article, we introduce the notion of plumbing poverty as a conceptual and methodological heuristic to examine the intersectional nature of infrastructure, space, and social inequality. Plumbing poverty is understood in a dual sense: first, as a material and infrastructural condition produced by social relations that fundamentally vary through space and, second, as a methodology that operationalizes the spatial exploration of social inequality. Drawing on millions of census records, we strip household water security down to a single vital measure—the presence of complete household plumbing—to assess its spatial and sociodemographic trends. We identify distinct hot spots (geographic clusters of higher than average values) of plumbing poverty, track its social and spatial variance, and expose its fundamentally racialized nature. Our study finds that plumbing poverty is neither spatially nor socially random in the United States. Rather, plumbing incompleteness is spatially clustered in certain regions of the country and is clearly racialized: Living in an American Indian or Alaskan Native, black, or Hispanic household increases the odds of being plumbing poor, and these predictors warp and woof through space. In considering who experiences the slow violence of infrastructural dysfunction, a geography that is simultaneously ignored and unevenly expressed in the United States, we argue that analyses of space and social difference are central to understanding household water insecurity and must be prioritized in the development of cross-comparable metrics and global measurement tools. Key Words: census microdata, hot spot analysis, household water insecurity, infrastructural geographies, IPUMS. 家户水资源不安全，是对人类健康与发展的全球危害，但既有的度量，却缺乏对地理不均和空间变异的系统性考量。我们于本文中引入“配管贫穷”一词，作为概念与方法论上的启发，以检视基础建设、空间与社会不均之间的相互交织本质。配管贫穷以双重观念进行理解：首先作为由根本上具有空间变异的社会关系所生产的物质与基础建设条件，再者，作为操作社会不均的空间探索之方法。运用数以百万计的人口普查纪录，我们将家户水资源安全拆解成单一的重要测量——完整家户配管的存在——以评估其空间和社会人口趋势。我们指认配管贫穷的显着热点（较平均值为高的地理群聚), 追溯其社会和空间变异，并揭露其根本上的种族化本质。我们的研究发现，在美国，配管贫穷在空间或社会上并非具任意性。反之，配管不全在空间上集中于美国的若干区域，并明显是种族化的：居住于美国印地安人或阿拉斯加原住民族、黑人或西裔的家户中，增加了配管不足的机会，且这些预测指标随着空间经纬而异。在考量什麽人经历基础建设功能障碍的慢性暴力中——一种在美国同时受到忽略并不均展现的地理——我们主张，空间与社会差异的分析，是理解家户水资源不安全的核心，并且必需在建立横跨可比较的度量和全球测量工具时给予优先顺序。关键词：人口普查微观数据，热点分析，家户水资源不安全，基础建设地理学，微观共享整合数据库（IPUMS）。 La inseguridad en la disponibilidad de agua potable para uso doméstico es una amenaza global para la salud y el desarrollo humano, aunque las métricas existentes adolecen de la falta de consideración sistemática de la desigualdad geográfica y la variación espacial. En este artículo presentamos la noción de pobreza de plomería como heurística conceptual y metodológica para examinar la naturaleza interseccional de la infraestructura, el espacio y la desigualdad social. La pobreza de plomería se entiende en un sentido dual: primero, como una condición material e infraestructural producida por las relaciones sociales que fundamentalmente varían a través del espacio, y, segundo, como una metodología que operacionaliza la exploración espacial de la desigualdad social. Basándonos en millones de registros censales, desnudamos la seguridad del agua para uso doméstico, hasta convertirla en una sencilla medida vital—la presencia de una cabal plomería en el hoga—para evaluar sus tendencias espaciales y sociodemográficas. Identificamos puntos calientes perceptibles (agrupamientos geográficos con valores más altos que el promedio) de pobreza de plomería, rastreamos su varianza social y espacial, y exponemos su naturaleza fundamentalmente racializada. Nuestro estudio establece que la pobreza de plomería en los Estados Unidos no es ni espacial ni socialmente aleatoria. En vez de eso, la plomería deficiente se presenta agrupada espacialmente en ciertas regiones del país y es claramente racializada: Vivir en un hogar de indígenas americanos o nativos de Alaska, negro o hispánico, incrementa las posibilidades de ser pobre en plomería, y tales predictores campean a través del espacio. Al considerar quién experimenta la lenta violencia de la disfunción estructural, una geografía que es simultáneamente ignorada y expresada de manera desigual en los Estados Unidos, consideramos que los análisis de espacio y de diferencia social son centrales para entender la inseguridad del agua para uso doméstico y debe tener prioridad en el desarrollo de métricas comparables y herramientas de medición de uso global. Palabras clave: análisis de puntos calientes, geografías infraestructurales, inseguridad de agua potable, microdatos censales, IPUMS.