Gender Differences in Household Poverty and in the Impact of Cash Transfers on Human Capital Development in Kenya

Abstract

Addressing gender inequality and poverty in households will enhance people’s choices to achieve equal rights and opportunities, and the capacity to make independnent decisions and contribute to social and economic development of a country. To achieve these important milestones in a country’s development agenda, adresssing gender poverty differences in households, investing in human capital through schooling and provision of quality health care becomes imperative. The study used two household-level surveys conducted in Kenya by the Kenya National Bureau of Statstics in 2005/06 and 2015/16 to answer the research objectives. The first objective of the study was to examine the evolution of the gender poverty rate gap and identify the factors that underlie differences in poverty rates between female headed households (FHHs) and male headed households (MHHs). An extended Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis with nonlinear regression was performed. Though, the findings indicate that FHHs (1.12) have a higher risk of falling into poverty than MHHs (0.95), the decline in poverty rate was higher for FHHs (8.33%) than for MHHs (6.69%). Therefore, the results do not support the feminization of poverty hypothesis in Kenya. The decomposition results indicate that the factors that have bridged the gender poverty gap between 2005/06 and 2015/16 include cash transfers (CTs) that explains 11.02 percent of the gaps, literacy level (53.97%), university education (10.39%), secondary education (40.84%), employment in the public and private sectors (26.66%) and business employment (10.58%). The second objective of the study investigated the impact of government CTs on school enrolment and attendance using the Propensity Score Matching and nonlinear regression approaches. The results show that CTs have an impact on human capital development (HCD) through improvement in children school enrolment and attendance in Kenya. Cash Transfers are important in addressing gender disparities in school enrolment and attendance with significant effects in both girls and boys, though the magnitude is higher for boys. The third objective of the study investigated the impact of government CTs on the nutritional status and incidences of diarrhoea among children under five years. The findings show that CTs are capable of reducing incidences of diarrhoea but does not have any significant impact on nutritional status of children under five years. Policy considerations to bridge the gender poverty gap between FHHs and MHHs, and between boys and girls include a robust social protection safety net; and bridging secondary and university education, and employment differences between FHHs and MHHs