Demand for household sanitation in India using NFHS-3 data

Using the methodology described in Sect. 4.1, we rank households demand for toilets.

The findings gives an idea of the households’ preference ranking with respect to other consumer durables. Table 3 indicates toilets get a lower preference—ranked 12 out of 21 different types of consumer durables that we investigated. Demand to have televisions and motorcycles both ranks higher than toilets. It means that these two items are more likely to be adopted at a lower level of wealth before toilets. A limitation of this data is that it is relatively old (NFHS-3 was implemented in 2005–2006). A newer data set is most likely to reveal mobile phones getting a better rank than toilets. A lower ranking of toilets indicates that the problem of sanitation in India is not solely determined by the supply-side factors. Thus supply-side government policy such as construction of toilets is unlikely to succeed, and a proper policy might requires behavioural alterations. This will help develop market for toilets (O’Reilly and Louis 2014).

Accounting for cultural, social, educational and infrastructural differences across India, we also map how toilets will be adopted across various states in India (See Table 4). Our results indicate Kerala and north-eastern states have a higher preference for toilets. This is consistent with the analysis by Ghosh and Cairncross (2014) and Bonu and Kim (2009) who finds that access to toilets are highest among the north-eastern states. North-eastern states and Kerala are educationally better-off in comparison with rest of India. Female empowerment is also higher. For example, communities such as the Nairs and Ezhavas in Kerala, and the Khasi, Jaintias, and the Garo tribes in Meghalaya (comprising majority of the population) practice matriarchy, where women have power in activities relating to allocation, exchange, and production.

Consistent with Coffey et al. (2014) find that in northern and north-west India, there is a definite preference for defecating in the open. In our ranking analysis, Bihar (rank 8), Madhya Pradesh (rank 11), Haryana (rank 12), Maharashtra (14), Uttar Pradesh (rank 15), Rajasthan (rank 18) are some of the worst performers in using toilets. Cultural differences matter. For example, villagers in tribal areas in northern and West Indian states are not used to the practice of using toilets. For them, to relieve inside four walls of toilets are like defecating in the house. In fact, these villagers use toilets for storage purpose (storing valuables) as government built toilets are the only concrete structure they had in the house.⁴

We report regression results in Table 5. We present an unrestricted model (Model 1 in Table 5), and a restricted version (Model 2 in Table 5). In the restricted version, we drop the gender and the house variables.⁵

Table 5 indicates the importance of female literacy rates. The coefficient on female literacy rates suggests that as the level of education increases, women are more likely to adopt a toilet. The odds ratio for households in which a woman has attained a higher education is 3.1 times more in comparison with households where a woman has attained education till the preschool level. Our result is consistent with Wei et al. (2004) and Ghosh and Cairncross (2014) stressing the need for female literacy rates.

We find, as the number of women in any household increases, that household is less likely to adopt a toilet. The gender variable is also not statistically significant. Results from Jenkins and Curtis (2005) and Santos et al. (2011) indicate otherwise. Women are more likely to adopt better sanitation practices than men due to perceived benefits of greater dignity and safety. In fact, the Sanitation Quality, Use, Access and Trends (SQUAT) survey, 2014, conducted in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan, find women are more likely to use toilets than men.

However, we have explanations for this result. Verick (2014) find low work participation rates among women in India. Therefore, on an average, households with more number of women are also the households with a lower living standard. We find households with woman as head member has more number of female members (2.8 women per household) in comparison with households with men as head member (2.2 women per household). In fact, households with woman as head member have a lower mean standard of living index score in comparison with the households headed by men, −0.071 (for female) compared to 0.012 (for male) (See, Figs. 2, 3). With more number of poor female family members, there is a likelihood that the household may not have a toilet.

Households with a better standard of living are likely to own toilets more than the ones who are poor. Our model predicts that the odds of owning a toilet becomes 7.6 times higher if standard of living index variable increases by 1 unit. A richer household with a pucca house⁶ is more likely to have toilets. Research by Dickinson and Pattanayak (2007) yields similar findings, with correlation between housing characteristics such as type of walls and ownership of toilets. Halder and Kabir (2008) demonstrated that the absence of a toilet facility is linked to a lower socio-economic status (based on household assets, housing conditions, etc.) in Bangladesh.

We find that urban households are more likely to have toilets in comparison with their rural counterparts. In comparison with rural areas, the odds for having toilets in mega cities such as Mumbai and Kolkata are nearly 35 times higher. The odds ratio for households having toilets in small cities, in turn is higher than ones residing in small towns. And all these urban-odd ratios are higher than the odd ratios computed for the rural areas. A household in a small town is 2.8 times more likely to have a toilet than his counterpart from rural areas. Our findings is similar to that of Bonu and Kim (2009) who demonstrate that the rural-urban differential in household possession of latrines has remained large over the past decade—diminishing slightly from 62% in 1992–1993 to 57.8% in 2004–2005. According to the National Sample Survey report (Government of India 2015), while 87.9% of the urban households were found to have access to water for use in toilets, only 42.5% rural households had this facility. Banerjee and Banik (2014) show for 1% increase in a closed drainage system, the income increases between 0.96 and 2.58%.

The Planning Commission, Government of India (2002) has cited two reasons as to why urbanization might lead to more toilets coverage. First is the higher concentration and construction of toilet facilities in urban areas are facilitated by government-private initiatives, which is not so prevalent in rural areas. Second is because of other factors such as lower awareness about possible health benefits, higher levels of poverty, beliefs that owning a household toilets have higher costs, and a simple lack of modernization could be a barrier to improved sanitation in rural areas.

The positive sign on the coefficient of agricultural land (Hectare variable) indicates that as number of units of agricultural land holding increases, the household becomes wealthier and is more likely to own toilets. This finding is similar to Salter (2008) and O’Connell (2014). Additionally, the odds ratio for households that own a bank or post office account is 1.2 times more likely to have a toilet than the ones who do not have access to these amenities. Wealthier people not only have better access to financial institutions but are also more likely to own toilets.

Then there is religion factor affecting use of toilets. In terms of odds, the religion variables demonstrate that Muslim households are 5.4 times more likely to adopt a toilet than a Hindu household is. Even a Christian household is 1.3 times more likely to adopt a toilet in comparison with their Hindu counterparts. Using DHS data, Bonu and Kim (2009) obtained a similar result, with the Hindu households having the lowest coverage of sanitation facilities in comparison with other religions.

This result is surprising, as Indian Muslims are on average are poorer than the Hindus (Bhalotra et al. 2010). The example from Bangladesh (a predominantly Muslim dominated country) suggests a reason for superior sanitation rate in the former in comparison with that of India is because culturally Muslims are accustomed to offering prayer (azan) five times a day. And, each time they do, they have a practice of washing their hands and feet, and physically cleaning themselves. Muslim women are more likely to adopt better sanitation practices in comparison with their male counterparts due to the perceived benefits of dignity and safety. However, Hazra and Dutta (2016) find that Muslims are generally less averse to owning and using affordable toilets which need to have their pits emptied every few years than Hindus.

The coefficient of the Caste variable predicted by Model 2 is -0.253, implies that Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class (OBC) households have a lower probability of using toilets when compared with households from general caste Hindu, Muslims, and Christians. Srinivasan and Mohanty (2004) have found that the level of abject poverty is higher among these castes, which could be a potential reason for poorer sanitation coverage among SC, ST, and OBCs.

Finally is the state-level variance in the coverage of toilets. The odds ratio for households in the north-eastern Indian States of Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya etc., and the southern state of Kerala having toilets are much higher than a household in Delhi (the reference state). For example, a household in Tripura is 761.5 times more likely to have toilets than a household in Delhi. The state dummies for Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Tamil Nadu have negative coefficients implying that the probability of households using toilets in these states is lower than in Delhi. Such findings have been observed in previous academic literature as well, with the backward states of Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh having lower levels of toilets coverage in comparison with other states (Coffey et al. 2014). For Tamil Nadu—a Hindu dominated state—the reason for its poor performance on sanitation could be attributed to the cultural factor. Ramaswamy (2005) and Bathran (2011) argue that open defecation among Hindu households is due to caste system, where the customary circumvention of excreta is sustained by keeping defecation away from the house and entrusting the clean-up job to the so-called untouchables or ‘lower’ castes. To sum up, even after controlling for the usual socio-economic factors like caste, religion, education, women-empowerment, wealth, and access to water, we find that state-level variation exists. The main reason for open defecation is behaviour and mindset of the people who have continued this practice of defecating in the open for centuries.

To check robustness of our results and also that the literature indicates that the rural households are prone to open defecation, we do a sub-sample analysis with only rural households. The coefficient of a variable originally considered is robust if its sign and level of significance do not change. Considering rural households only, we find that our results are consistent with the previous analysis. The results are shown in Table 6.