Despite high education levels, Kerala homes still use old-age cooking fuels

Promoters of safer cookstoves have struggled to find the perfect balance of efficiency, price, and a user-friendly design that would drive widespread adoption

A majority of surveyed households in Kerala still use multiple types of cookstoves, a phenomenon known as “stacking”, thus undermining attempts to introduce cleaner stoves and reduce indoor air pollution, a study conducted in 2016 has found.

We, researchers at Evidence for Policy Design at the Harvard Kennedy School and Princeton University, led the survey in Kerala, a state with relatively high levels of clean fuel use. About one in two rural households (51%) in Kerala use clean cooking fuels, compared to a national average of under one in four (24%), data from the