What are the triggers of household decision-making on waste disposal choices? A gender differentiated analysis.

Across the African continent especially in Nigeria, solid waste disposal has created significant environmental and health issues. Studies on household decision-making on waste disposal choices are insignificant. This study uses the most recent 2018/2019 General Household Survey (GHS) - a national representative sample of 5000 households collected by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and World Bank - to offer greater insight on the socio-economic drivers of household's decision-making on the choice of alternative refuse disposal systems and how these choices vary across male-headed households (MHHs) and female-headed households (FHHs) in Nigeria. Adopting the Multinomial Logit and Exogenous Switching Treatment Effects Regression (ESTER) models, estimates show that education, family sizes, non-home ownerships, water availability, toilet locations, electricity connections within buildings, geopolitical zones, and urban areas are some determinants of household waste disposal choices which also varies by household types. However, quite a significant number of FHHs are observed to utilize informal refuse disposal systems than the MHHs representing a gender gap in the informal waste usage of 9%. In the counterfactual scenario FHHs average probability of adopting compound (informal) refuse disposal choices, would have increased by 4.2% (decreased by 5.4%) if they had the same socio-economic characteristics as MHHs. These results present some interesting factors related to the heterogeneity of alternative refuse disposal choices the heterogeneous effects of gender on such decisions. The study thus offers some policy inputs on how to ensure a clean and safe environment through proper disposal options.

Agricultural production and CO2 emissions from two sources in the ECOWAS region: New insights from quantile regression and decomposition analysis.

Agriculture being the dominant economic activity of the West African economies is responsible for the most greenhouse gasses emitted in the region. Are there heterogeneous determinants of environmental degradation across low, intermediate, and high CO2 emitters in West Africa? Considering the significance of agriculture, industrial activities, renewable energy consumption and economic growth in West-Africa, this paper investigates the conditional determinants of environmental degradation from two sources (per-capita CO2 emission and CO2 emission from liquid sources) using panel data from 15 ECOWAS countries for the period 1990-2015. The study adopts a panel quantile regression technique with non-additive fixed effects as well as quintile decomposition techniques to explore if the relationship between agricultural and economic factors differs across low, intermediate, and high CO2 emitters and the extent of CO2 emission gap between Low Income Group (LIG) and Lower-Middle Income Groups (LmIG). Results from the mean estimators show that while agricultural production impedes CO2 emissions from liquid sources, it however increases total emissions implying a shift from mechanized farming to more traditional farming methods and the burning and use of biomass from agricultural produce as an energy source. Estimates of the conditional determinants of environmental degradation vary along the quantiles signifying heterogeneity of the determinants of environmental degradation across, low, intermediate, and high CO2 emitters. Additionally, results emanating from the quantile decomposition procedure show that lower-income West African economies have superseded their lower-middle income counterparts at higher quantiles of CO2 emissions.

Determinants of household fuel choices among Nigerian family heads: are there gender-differentiated impacts?

The consensus in the literature holds that female-headed households (FHHs) are more vulnerable to social and economic exclusion than male-headed households (MHHs). This paper investigates the socioeconomic determinants of household cooking fuel choices across MHHs and FHHs, using the rich Nigerian Demographic Health Survey data. Using the exogenous switching treatment effect regression (ESTER) technique, the study is able to unravel differences in socioeconomic effects of gender inequality on cooking fuel choices in Nigeria. The results validate the energy ladder hypothesis in the Nigerian case and show that the choices of dirty fuel (biomass) is more prevalent among the de-jure FHH when compared with the de-facto FHH and MHHs. Also, the probability of biomass-use among MHHs would have fallen by 1.3% if MHHs had similar socioeconomic attributes as the FHHs. In the same vain for FHHs, the probability of kerosene-use would have increased by 2%. The study observed no gender gap in kerosene-use. Thus, the established gender gap in biomass- and kerosene-use would have reduced to 6.7% and 2.8%, respectively, if the de-facto FHHs had same socioeconomic attributes as the de-jures. Considering the traditional gendered household division of labor within the households, de-jure FHHs' energy choices may be due to limited economic opportunities that guarantees cleaner energy options.