Stability and change in family size preferences among rural youth in Kenya

Abstract

Data analyzed here indicate that rural youth in Kenya are developing rather clearly defined family size preferences and that they are capable of differentiating their own family desires from what they see as ideal for others. The validity of responses is checked by looking for general patterns in these data which have been previously observed for youth ideal fertility than desired fertility, that younger youth have higher family size preferences than older youth and that males generally have slightly higher family size desires than females. A unique feature of the data is that the same questions were asked of respondents nine months apart. While the period between interviews is not ideal for a test-retest reliability check, analysis indicates that the level of stability in response to family size preference questions was remarkably high for a population of this type.