Limited benefits and high costs are associated with low monetary returns for Guatemalan household investment in water, sanitation, and hygiene technologies

•Within our partner community, household investments in sanitation and food preparation environments yield a positive net benefit.•Among the four regions we examined, only the state of San Marcos, Guatemala had a positive return on investment for households at year 60.•‘WaSH mobility’ is a household’s ability to improve its WaSH technology status.•Limited household options for improving WaSH technologies reduces WaSH mobility via reductions in return on investment.•SEM provides a novel method to allocate benefit estimates to multiple WaSH technologies in improving child height-for-age.