Five per cent of children living on the streets consider themselves married, while some are living together with their partners.
According to a census report launched by the Ministry of Labour on Wednesday, 786 children were among the 22 per cent of people on the streets who claimed to be married.
Sixty-eight per cent of people living on the streets aged 10 and above have engaged in sexual activities but only a few use condoms.
Only 37 per cent of street families use condoms. Seventy per cent of the females and 59 per cent of males said they don't.
The study also found that those aged between 15 and 29 were less likely to use condoms.
According to the statistics, females living on the streets are more vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases as 96.4 per cent said they engage in commercial sex at night.
In fact, 55 per cent of the females suffer from HIV and other STIs, while males are mostly affected by skin diseases at 74 per cent, the report states.
Some 22 per cent of the people living on the streets are married, while 58 per cent have never been married.
Fifty-four per cent of the women living on the streets have at least one child. Most of them gave birth aged between 15 and 19.
Some 57 per cent of the women have a child and are either married or not, while 73 per cent of those never married have children.
The study revealed that 46,639 people live on the streets in the 47 counties, most of them being males (72 per cent).
Seventy-five per cent of people on the streets are aged between 10 and 34, with three out of four being youths.
Of the total number, 21,550 are youths aged between 19 and 34, while 15,722 are aged 18 and below. Some 24 per cent of those aged below 18 don’t know where their parents are.
Nairobi county has the highest number of street families at 15,337, followed by Mombasa at (7,529), Kisumu (2,746), Uasin Gishu (2,147) and Nakuru at 2,005.
Seventy-six per cent of the street population had at least reached a pre-primary education level, while 14 per cent acquired secondary education.
Most of the educated street families are females at 77 per cent (primary education), compared to only seven per cent of their male counterparts.
The study also shows that two-thirds of people on the streets had moved from another town within the same county.
Two in every five persons have lived on the streets for 10 years and above, with more women having stayed longer (45 per cent) than men (39 per cent).
Most of the street families said they moved from place to place out of personal choice.
Edited by R.Wamochie
