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.
