Characteristics of the respondents by wealth ranks

The empirical evidence suggest that the probability of a household adopting biogas technology increases with decreasing age of the head of household, increasing household income, increasing number of cattle owned, increasing household size, male head of household and increasing cost of traditional fuels (Walekhwa et al., 2009). Also economics, material shortage, operation, and the people’s acceptance are considered to be the main factors preventing the diffusion of biogas technology (Ta§demiroglu 1988).

Findings on education show the slightly well-off respondents to had relatively good education than other categories although the post secondary education was generally low across the three categories. Post secondary education such as vocational and other training is important as it creates professionals and experts including biogas experts in rural areas. The extremely poor spend very little in education hovering around 2% of household budgets (Banerjee (2007). The reason for low spending in education is that children in poor households typically attend public schools or other schools that do not charge a fee even if the education quality is poor. Poor parents are not reacting to the low quality of these schools, either by sending their children to better and more expensive schools or by putting pressure on the government to do something about quality in government schools. This partly occurs because quite often they are illiterate themselves and therefore may have a hard time recognizing that their children are not learning much (Banerjee, 2007).

Regarding family size respondents from slightly well off had small family size (3.3 persons) compared to the less poor (4.6 persons) and the poor (5.9 persons) (Table 3). This could be explained partly by the low levels of education of the poor. The less educated are more likely to start family life early than educated ones and therefore have high chances of having several children in their reproductive life time. These findings are consistent with Banerjee (2007) observation that family size is large for the extremely poor respondents.

Wealth Category

Slightly Well-off

Less Poor

The Poor

Family size (persons)

3.3

4.6

5.9

Married respondents (%)

78.9

82.6

87.9

Female respondents (%)

22.4

40.7

35.7

Respondent’s age (years)

48.4

53.5

44.0

Education

No formal education (%)

0

1.3

5.1

Completed primary education (%)

50

59.8

66.7

Completed secondary education (%)

33.3

25.5

20.5