| dc.description.abstract | Planners in many developing countries, including Kenya, are aware of the high population
growth rate and its negative impact on human capital accumulation. When population growth is
not checked its consumption component would negatively affect human capital growth
especially in low-income economies.
Raising the quality of children by increasing the school enrollments and lowering high fertility
are frequently the goals of public policy in many developing countries. Studies outside Kenya
have found that at a certain stage of the demographic transition, parents begin to reduce the
number of children they would have in order to increase the investment in each child. Perhaps
the most obvious investment in child quality is enrollment and retention of a child in school.
One expects that families with many children will tend to invest less in each, and that families
with fewer children will make greater human capital investment per child.
This study explores the relationship between child schooling and fertility in Nyeri District. The
study was conducted in Nyeri district of the Central province. The study drew samples from the
divisions. Kieni West and Kieni East divisions were purposely picked for the research.
Random sampling was further used to pick locations and sub-locations. To get representative
sample, systematic sampling was used to get 673 households (out of 7,000 households) used for
this study. The women and own children formed the unit of analysis for the study. The data was
obtained by the use of interview guides and observation schedules. Fertility was taken as the size
of the family and was defined as the number of children ever born to a woman in a household.
The women were taken from the ages of 15-49 years and the children were considered between
the ages of 7-18 years old. Child quality (number of years in school) was constructed by considering child's schooling and age and averaged over all of a woman's children aged 7 to 18
years.
Survey data that included household characteristics, household economic characteristics as well
as community infrastructural variables, was used to ascertain whether or not a tradeoff exists
between fertility and child schooling and what policies will most likely . promote it. The method ,
adopted for data analysis was 2 stages least squares (2-SLS). The results were also compared
with ordinary least square (OLS) . The most salient result of the analysis is the evidence of the
existence of a child quantity-quality tradeoff in Nyeri district: higher fertility is associated with
lower child schooling. Mother's education plays a big role in lowering fertility and raising child
schooling. An increase in acres of land (a proxy for income) is associated with lower fertility and
greater child schooling. This impact of land acreage on both child qualityand child quantity in
Nyeri is expected, as it is in line with patterns observed elsewhere. Price-like factors such as
distances to schools were found to have significant negative impact on child schooling. This
confirms the theoretical prediction that the longer the distance to school, the less the likelihood
of a child's enrolment in school. Bursary, which is a subsidy to the cost of education, was
hypothesized to have a positive relationship between school bursaries and child quality, in terms
of a child's educational attainment. This relationship is only evident at higher levels of subsidies.
The effect of sex of the household head on child quality was investigated and female headed
households were found to have low levels of child schooling. Furthermore, the effect 'of age at
marriage on child quality and fertility is negative and statistically significant.
The policy implications of these results are noteworthy. Female education can be used as a
potent instrument for lowering fertility and for raising the schooling of children. School subsidies influencing school enrollment. A policy that would make schools widely accessible would
increase enrollment, especially among girls. | en |
