Explaining the Effects of Socioeconomic and Housing Characteristics on the Choice of Toilet Facilities among Ghanaian Households

Table 1

Definition of variables.

Variable	Description	Mean^a (%)
Age	Years from birth	46.3^a
Education	Total number of years of formal education	3.0^a
Household size	Number of people in the same home and eating from the same pot	4.2^a
Rent expenditure	The total imputed rent cost for all housing in Ghana cedis	685.1^a
Per capita expenditure	The total annual expenditure in Ghana cedis per an individual of a household	3,606.5^a
Sex	Males (1)	68.7
	Females (0)	31.3
Marital status	Married (1)	63.9
	Single (0)	36.1
Urban	Urban (1)	42.8
	Rural (0)	57.2
Region	Greater Accra (0)	9.9
	Ashanti (1)	12.3
	Brong Ahafo (2)	9.4
	Central (3)	9.4
	Eastern (4)	10.1
	Northern (5)	10.1
	Upper East (6)	9.7
	Upper West (7)	9.7
	Volta (8)	10.0
	Western (9)	9.5
Ownership of dwelling	Own (relative/purchased) (0)	51.9
	Private entity/individual (1)	20.8
	Government (2)	27.3
Dwelling type	Others	1.3
	Compound	62.6
	Flat/semidetached/separate house	36.1
Welfare quintile	First (0)	22.3
	Second (1)	18.0
	Third (2)	17.0
	Fourth (3)	18.6
	Fifth (4)	24.1

Reference groups in the categorical variables are given a value of “0”; values with superscript a are means. The assumption is that the level of open defecation would be high in the reference groups.