Who Suffers from Indoor Air Pollution? Evidence from Bangladesh
In this paper the authors investigate individuals' exposure to indoor air pollution. Using new survey data from Bangladesh, they analyze exposure at two levels-differences within households attributable to family roles, and differences across...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/10/5188511/suffers-indoor-air-pollution-evidence-bangladesh http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14229 |
| Summary: | In this paper the authors investigate
individuals' exposure to indoor air pollution. Using
new survey data from Bangladesh, they analyze exposure at
two levels-differences within households attributable to
family roles, and differences across households attributable
to income and education. Within households, they relate
individuals' exposure to pollution in different
locations during their daily round of activity. The authors
find high levels of exposure for children and adolescents of
both sexes, with particularly serious exposure for children
under 5. Among prime-age adults, they find that men have
half the exposure of women (whose exposure is similar to
that of children and adolescents). They also find that
elderly men have significantly lower exposure than elderly
women. Across households, they draw on results from their
previous paper (Dasgupta et al, 2004), which relate
pollution variation across households to choices of cooking
fuel, cooking locations, construction materials, and
ventilation practices. They find that these choices are
significantly affected by family income and adult education
levels (particularly for women). Overall, the authors find
that the poorest, least-educated households have twice the
pollution levels of relatively high-income households with
highly-educated adults. For children in a typical household,
pollution exposure can be halved by adopting two simple
measures-increasing their outdoor time from 3 to 5 or 6
hours a day, and concentrating outdoor time during peak
cooking periods. The authors recognize that weather and
other factors may intervene occasionally, and that child
supervision outdoors may be difficult for some households.
However, the potential benefits are so great that neighbors
might well agree to pool outdoor supervision once they
became aware of the implications for their children's health. |
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