Discussion
The majority (78%) of surveyed households were keeping
small ruminants, which confirms the important role of
goats and sheep in the livelihood strategies of rural families.
A household was more likely to keep small ruminants
when its head had relatively fewer economic options as
was the case of households with no off-farm income and no
access to formal credit. These results indicate clearly the
financial role of these animals in the household livelihood.
In the study area, the majority of the household heads were
involved in rainfed agriculture. They had very few off farm
and credit opportunities and thus resort to auxiliary sources
of income through the possession of a few goats or sheep.
The older the head of household, the higher the likelihood
that the household decides to keep small ruminants. This is
probably because younger household heads are more likely
to offer their labor and to take part-time jobs in the
neighboring peri-urban area, while older ones remain on
the farm. However, although the logistic regression model
achieved an overall success of 78% with a sensitivity of
95%, its low specificity (16%) limits the statistical power
of the logistic model to predict a household’s decision to
keep small ruminants based on the socio-economic characteristics
of the head of household.
The prediction of the decision of an individual household
member to become owner of small ruminants as a
function of his/her individual socio-economic characteristics
resulted in a better specificity (30%). The results
confirm that small ruminants are non-pooled household
resources in southern Benin and individual owners are
independent decision-makers who have different socioeconomic
characteristics and also different objectives and
preferences. These findings are in agreement with the
results of previous studies (Okali and Sumberg 1986;
Jaitner et al. 2001). In the study area, household income
was not pooled, and household members often had separate,
culturally designated obligations to meet different sets
of needs within and beyond the household. The family
unites to work together on the farm but then splits up to
work separately off-farm. As observed for the household
head, the likelihood of an individual household member to
own small ruminants decreased with the ability to find offfarm
employment and access credit from formal sources.
This confirms the role of small ruminants as saving or
living banks for the resource-poor rural people. Female
household members were more likely to own small ruminants
than males, and younger females more likely than
older ones. Similar results were reported by Jaitner et al.
(2001) in Gambia and by Okali and Sumberg (1986) in
southwest Nigeria. Women are more likely to own small
ruminants probably because of their determination to