Thanks for the comment. The Roman water system is indeed a marvel and did vastly facilitate access to water for the masses. Specifically though, I was referring to having easy access to tap water within one’s home. That, to my knowledge, was not common, whereas today nearly everyone in the first and second world has that [1].

[1] “It was very rare for a pipe to supply water directly to the home of a private citizen, since Romans would have to acquire an official authorization to validate the direct tap. Water mostly serviced the ground floor in buildings, rarely supplying the upper floors due to the difficulty this would provide in the gravity-powered system. Residents of apartment buildings who lived in the upper floors would have to carry water upstairs and store it in their rooms for sanitary uses” from https://engineeringrome.org/the-water-system-of-ancient-rome....

And yes, there is still many parts of the world still in poverty, but that is changing rapidly and doesn’t change the larger point that technology, by and large, democratizes and filters to the poor.