Consumption of clean and dirty cooking fuels in ghanaian households: The role of financial inclusion

Abstract

Home cooking is considered an important activity which promotes healthier lives, sustenance, and binds families and people together. Despite the benefits of home cooking, it is the leading source of household air pollution and its associated health risks particularly for developing countries including Ghana. The role of financial inclusion in facilitating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations is explored in this study for clean cooking technologies (i.e., SDG 7). The proposed study is based on three datasets from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), comprising of Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS) round 6, round 7 and the pooled form. Using distance to the nearest financial institution as instrument, the study employed probit two-stage least squares to investigate the heterogenous impacts of financial inclusion on household cooking fuels in Ghana. The findings show that financial inclusion increases the consumption of clean cooking fuel but reduces dirty fuels such as firewood, charcoal, kerosene etc. Female-headed households were found to be more impacted by financial inclusion over time than their male counterparts. The results also showed that financially included rural households reduced their consumption of dirty cooking fuels than their urban counterparts. These findings have important policy implications.