Correlates of desired family size among married women in Kenya: evidence from kdhs 2003

Abstract

Desired family size has been of interest to both researchers and policy makers because it offers opportunity to estimate fertility preferences. The desire to have a particular number of children has been argued to be influenced by several factors including women's level of education, their wealth status, their religious affiliation, among several others. In light of the improved socio-economic status among women in Kenya, especially regarding their education, it was expected that the preferred family size would drop from the national average of 4.1 to lower levels. However this has not been the case as evidenced from the 2003 Demographic and Health Survey findings in Kenya. This study therefore set out to determine which factors currently influence women's family size preferences. Easterlin's theory of fertility was used as a guiding framework in the study. His integration of sociological and economic aspects in the explanation of fertility behaviour makes this theory appropriate in this study. The dependent variable measured in this study is the ideal number of children that women said they would wish to have. It is an interval scale variable, thereby necessitating the use of linear regression in the analysis. Tt1~,)ndependent variables measured included women's education level, wealth index, type of place of residence, work status, religion, ethnicity, type of union and husband's desired family size. , Dummy variables were created to enable the measurement of the independent variables. The multivariate results revealed that women's education and ethnicity had the greatest effect on the preferred family size that a woman wanted. Other factors that had significant effect were religion and wealth index. Of all the factors examined, women's type of place of residence and husband's desired family size had the least effect on the ideal number of children reported.