A Kenyan family at a park. Each additional year of schooling corresponds to a lower desire for more children, a pattern that persists regardless of a woman’s income, place of residence, or relationship status. Photo/ Freepik
Kenya’s family sizes have been shrinking for decades, from
eight children in 1978 to three today. Now, researchers say they know one big
reason – classrooms.
In fact, they conclude that the education of women may
outperform contraception as a long-term population strategy.
The researchers analysed datasets from the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) and found that the more schooling a woman
has, the smaller the family she wants, even when factors like wealth and
marital status are taken into account.
Each additional year of schooling corresponds to a lower
desire for more children, a pattern that persists regardless of a woman’s
income, place of residence, or relationship status.
“Increasing educational attainment leads to a significant
decrease in the preferred number of children of 0.15 children per school year
of education, even with the controlled variables,” said Maureen Tuvei of the Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST). She co-authored
the study with Zilpah Kageha and Cyrus Muhanga, from the same university.
The analysed data covered 32,152 women aged 15 to 49 years
drawn from 42,022 Kenyan households.
The findings were published last week in the African Journal of Empirical Research, under the title, “Effect of Educational Attainment on the
Preferred Number of Children among Women in Kenya: Evidence from the 2022 Kenya
Demographic and Health Survey Dataset”.
These findings correspond to international evidence that
education enables women to have more reproductive health knowledge and have low
fertility preferences.
Kenya’s fertility rate has been falling since the 1970s, when
women had an average of eight children.
The 2022 KDHS puts the total fertility rate at 3.4 children
per woman.
Tuvei and her colleagues said they carried out their study
because there was no certainty that the fall in Kenya’s fertility rate was being
induced by the educational attainment of couples.
Their analysis indicates that “the proportion of women
lacking any education has decreased, from 13 per cent in 2003 to six per cent in
2022,” while “the proportion of women with a higher education level than
secondary education rose to 19 per cent.”
It is clear this shift in education levels is transforming
Kenyan families, they said. “Education tends to liberate women, enabling them
to access information and knowledge that allows them to make the right
decisions regarding their reproductive health, such as the age of marriage, the
number of children they wish to have, and birth spacing.”
They explained that educated women were more likely to delay
marriage, use contraception and bear fewer children than their less educated
counterparts.
“The more the education, the fewer the children are
preferred. Age, wealth, contraceptive use, residence, and marital status are
some of the factors which mediate these effects, though education is an important determinant in all the results,” they said.
Tuvei and her colleagues applied the Human Capital Theory,
which assumes that people invest in education to increase productivity and
income. These choices then shape family size and reproductive timing.
They also found that the more money Kenyan women have, the
fewer children they want. “The wealth index reveals a decreasing trend in
fertility as wealth increases, with the richest quintile having the largest
negative effect.”
They describe education as a sustainable population
management strategy and a key to gender equity.
“Education makes the
number of children go down. Thus, it is advisable that families put more money
into education. Family planning consumes so much money, yet education appears
to be a better alternative; therefore, it is recommended that more resources
should be invested in education.”
The researchers are not dismissing family planning services,
but reframing the conversation. “Education gives women knowledge, autonomy and
access to reproductive health resources that allow them to make informed
choices on fertility,” they said.