Institute of Health Research, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, Ghana.
Christian Health Association of Ghana Secretariat, Accra, Ghana.
PLoS One. 2022 Mar 4;17(3):e0264187. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264187. eCollection 2022.
Globally, and in Ghana, a lot of people do practice open defecation as well as share toilet facilities with other households. Meanwhile, open defecation in particular, is associated with numerous negative health and economic effects. To this end, a number of empirical studies have been conducted on the determinants of access to sanitation facilities among households in Ghana. Nonetheless, while financial inclusion (sustainable ways of ensuring easier accessibility to cheap and useful financial products and services among individuals/firms) can enhance the ability of households or individuals to afford toilet facilities, hence, could help in curbing open defecation and sharing of toilet facilities among households, the previous studies on Ghana did not pay attention to it. This study therefore uses data from the 7th round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS7) to examine the association of financial inclusion with open defecation and sharing of toilet facilities among households in Ghana. The binary logit regression is used as the empirical estimation technique. The results show that, financial inclusion in general is associated with lesser likelihood of open defecation and sharing of toilet facilities among households in Ghana after controlling for welfare quintile, urban or rural residence and other covariates. Moreover, while informal financial inclusion is statistically insignificant, formal financial inclusion is found to be associated with reduced open defecation and sharing of toilet facilities among households. Thus, in the attempt to eliminate open defecation as well as reduce the sharing of toilet facilities among households in Ghana, conscious efforts should be devoted towards enhancing formal financial inclusion.
在全球范围内，包括加纳，很多人仍然有露天排便的习惯，并且与其他家庭共用厕所设施。而露天排便尤其会对健康和经济造成许多负面影响。为此，许多实证研究已经针对加纳家庭获得卫生设施的决定因素进行了研究。然而，尽管金融包容性（确保个人/企业更容易获得廉价和有用的金融产品和服务的可持续方式）可以提高家庭或个人负担厕所设施的能力，从而有助于遏制家庭中的露天排便和共用厕所设施的行为，但以前对加纳的研究并没有关注这一点。因此，本研究使用加纳生活水平调查（GLSS7）第 7 轮的数据，来考察金融包容性与加纳家庭中露天排便和共用厕所设施之间的关系。二元逻辑回归被用作实证估计技术。结果表明，在控制福利五分位数、城市或农村居住和其他协变量后，金融包容性总体上与加纳家庭中露天排便和共用厕所设施的可能性降低有关。此外，虽然非正规金融包容性在统计上不显著，但正规金融包容性与家庭中露天排便和共用厕所设施的减少有关。因此，为了消除加纳的露天排便现象，并减少家庭中共用厕所设施的情况，应该有意识地努力加强正规金融包容性。
