Politics and policy
Women carrying their babies queue for consultation during a past family
planning campaign. Kenya’s poor rural households have defied the
well-oiled birth control campaigns to retain their position as drivers
of the country’s rapid population growth. PHOTO | FILE |
NATION MEDIA GROUP
By GEORGE OMONDI, gomondi@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
- Survey finds that they continue to have twice as many children as rich counterparts.
Kenya’s poor rural households have defied the
well-oiled birth control campaigns to retain their position as drivers
of the country’s rapid population growth, a newly released demographic
report says.
On average, a rural woman has nearly twice the number of
children as her urban counterpart while the poorest family in Kenya
today has three times as many children as a rich one, according to the
Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) report that was released on
Wednesday.
The survey, conducted by the Kenya National Bureau
of Statistics (KNBS), however shows that the country’s birth rate has
dropped from 4.6 children per family five years ago to 3.9 by end of
2014 — mainly driven by a decline in the number of children in rich and
urban families.
The KNBS said the survey, which covered 40,300
households across the 47 counties, found that urban households on
average raise three children compared to nearly five by their rural
counterparts.
The poorest families are, however, struggling with
high level of dependency, each having as many as seven children
(fertility rate of 6.5) compared to just three (fertility rate of 2.8)
for rich families.
Economy
The statistics cast doubt on the effectiveness of
birth control measures that the authorities have been using to try to
bring population growth rate down to three per cent or 1.5 million
births annually.
High birth rate is among the factors identified as slowing down Kenya’s economic take-off.
Besides its stress on household incomes, a large
number of children compels the government to allocate substantial
amounts of resources to the social sector to run schools and primary
health centres at the expense of development spending.
The Ministry of Health has spent billions of
shillings in tax and donor funds to promote family planning through a
string of campaigns in the mass media in the past five years.
The rural and poor households are likely to be
isolated further in the wake of a recent government directive to its
departments and agencies to restrict advertisement to online platforms.
While the number of Internet users in Kenya grew to
26.1 million or 64.3 per 100 citizens by October to December 2014,
according to data prepared by the Communication Authority of Kenya, the
users are mostly urban and affluent.
“I’m looking forward to presenting the finding to
governors,” said Director of Medical Services Nicholas Muraguri during
the launch of the sixth edition of KDHS in Nairobi. “I hope we all agree
with us that it is time for smaller families.”
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