Who suffers from indoor air pollution? Evidence from Bangladesh

In this paper, we investigate individuals’ exposure to indoor air pollution. Using new survey data from Bangladesh, average hours spent by members of households in the cooking area, living area and outdoors in a typical day are combined with the estimates of pollution concentration in different locations in order to estimate exposure. We analyse exposure at two levels: differences within households attributable to family roles, and differences across households attributable to income and education. Within households, we relate individuals’ exposure to pollution in different locations during their daily round of activities. We find high levels of exposure for children and adolescents of both sexes, with particularly serious exposure for children under 5 years. Among prime-age adults, we find that men have half the exposure of women (whose exposure is similar to that of children and adolescents). We also find that elderly men have significantly lower exposure than elderly women. Across households, we draw on results from a previous paper, which relate pollution variation across households to choices of cooking fuel, cooking locations, construction materials and ventilation practices. We find that these choices are significantly affected by family income and adult education levels (particularly for women). Overall, we find that the poorest, least-educated households have twice the pollution levels of relatively high-income households with highly educated adults. Our findings further suggest that young children and poorly educated women in poor households face pollution exposures that are four times those for men in higher income households organized by more highly educated women. Since infants and young children suffer the worst mortality and morbidity from indoor air pollution, in this paper we consider measures for reducing their exposure. Our recommendations for reducing the exposure of infants and young children are based on a few simple, robust findings. Hourly pollution levels in cooking and living areas are quite similar because cooking smoke diffuses rapidly and nearly completely into living areas. However, outdoor pollution is far lower. At present, young children are only outside for an average of 3 hours per day. 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 per day, and concentrating outdoor time during peak cooking periods.