Socio-economic factors and clean cooking fuel consumption in India: A household level study

Abstract

The present paper investigates the clean cooking fuel transition in India and the role of socio-economic factors, in determining the primary cooking fuel choices among Indian households during the last seven years. Our empirical finding suggests that there has been a sharp increase in clean cooking fuel consumption from 2015–16 to 2019–21 across the socio-economic groups, castes, religions and rural-urban areas. Our logit regression estimates based on NFHS fourth and fifth-round data on a sample of 664,543 and 685,337 households suggest that socioeconomic status is imperative in the clean cooking fuel consumption process. We further demonstrate that, as the household's size and age increase, they prefer less clean cooking fuels; however, households living in urban areas, especially female-headed, are more likely to use clean cooking fuels than their counterparts. Our finding also indicates that lower caste households are less likely to use clean cooking fuel than their upper caste counterparts, even though there has been a sharp improvement for the SC caste from 2015–16 to 2019–21. A comparatively contrasting result for religion suggests that Muslims and Christians are more likely to use clean cooking fuels than Hindus. Similarly, households with higher educational attainment, better wealth status, and female financial decision-makers with the availability of piped water sources are more likely to use clean cooking fuels. Further, to understand the effectiveness of PMUY policies on overall LPG use, a Difference In Difference (DID) technique has been applied, and the result indicates a positive impact of PMUY on the overall use of clean cooking fuel for the BPL households.