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Kenyan Parents with Many Children are the Poorest

BY Soko Directory Team · November 6, 2018 06:11 am

Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) has shown that many households in Kenya with large families are the poorest, especially those headed by females.

According to the stats, it was noted that poverty increases with an increase in household size, which isn’t surprising for a scarce income on an already struggling family spell doom.

But why are parents living in poverty tend to have larger families? A number of reasons can be attributed to the trend, most of which are social, cultural, religious and economic causes. Nevertheless, let’s look at the statistics first.

KNBS says that households with at least one to three members recorded the lowest poverty headcount of 14.7 percent compared to 54.1 percent for households with seven or more family members.

The pattern carries even in domains including rural, peri-urban, and urban categories. What the data translate is that households with children, 33.7 percent, have a higher probability of being poor compared to those without children, represented by 13.5 percent.

The case is even worse in households headed by persons of 70 years and above. Compared to families headed by individuals of between 20 and 29 years that registered poverty rate of 15.9 percent, households headed by the elderly recorded higher poverty rates of 37.3 percent.

Here is an image showing the summary of the outlook:

Families headed by females are likely to be poorer than those headed by males. This statement is supported by the data below.

One of the many reasons that contribute to poverty in large families and rural areas is early marriages. Some parents still don’t see the value of educating the girl child deeming it a financial burden. After getting married, her dreams of education die and all that remains is to perpetuate the cycle of poverty by having kids from an early age.

Child mortality rates, limited access to education, lack of government-provided pensions or social security benefits, religion, and difficulty in accessing fundamental services and programs sensitizing them on the importance of focusing on economic development are the other reasons.

The high unemployment rates in the country, misuse of public funds, and leaders failing the people have also contributed to the spread of poverty in various regions across the country.

Meanwhile, even as the state continues to worsen, there is nothing that a little cash and education programs won’t do to help ease the burden. Amid the government’s unfavorable policies for doing business and the difficulty in accessing capital for business – which has improved over the years – the situation needs to be addressed immediately. Failure to do so, the poor will continue saying “The rich are different from us.”

Soko Directory is a Financial and Markets digital portal that tracks brands, listed firms on the NSE, SMEs and trend setters in the markets eco-system. Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/SokoDirectory and on Twitter: twitter.com/SokoDirectory

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