| dc.description.abstract | In Kenya the desire for additional children has been falling, but the decline has not been
uniform throughout the country. This study therefore examined the factors associated with
desire for additional children in Coast and Central Provinces, two of the provinces in Kenya
recording the highest and the lowestpercentages of women who desire additional children.
The data used were obtained from the 1998 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey. The
analysis utilized both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques.
Fertility preference was represented by the dummy variable, desire for additional children
which was dichotomized as I 'desire' and 0 'non-desire', and the following variables were
hypothesized to be associated with it; the number of living children, number of living sons,
current age of wife, child loss experience, education level of wife, work status of wife, current
place of residence and religion.
The results of the descriptive analysis reveal that currently married women in Central Province
are the least likely to desire additional children compared to currently married women in Coast
Province. In Central Province about two thirds (66%) of currently married women responded
that they don't desire an additional child, while in Coast Province this figure drops to (44%).
These differences were found to persist even when controls for the number of living children,
number of living sons and age of the women were introduced.
The results of themultiple logistic regression show that, the number of living children, number
of living sons, current age of wife, and current place of residence are significant in both
provinces, while education level of wife is only significant in Coast Province. Other variables
such a s child loss experience, reI igion, and work status 0 f wife are not signi ficant for both
provinces.
Although desire for additional children decreases as women age and increases with the number
of living children and the number of the living sons a woman has for both provinces, this study
found that differences between the two provinces are apparent when we look at proportions of
women who desire additional children within the respective categories of the above 3 variables.
For instance, a larger proportion of women with four or more children in Coast province (about
5
,
I
28 percent) a s opposed to about 5 percent in Central province desire to have an additional
child. About 27 percent of women in Coast province as compared with 4 percent of women
with 3 or more living sons desire an additional child. For age when we compare women from
the two provinces who are over 35 years, for Central province only about 7 percent desire an
additional child while for Coast province the figure is 32 percent.
Further differences between the two provinces are apparent when we look at socio -econornic
and socio-cultural factors affecting desire for additional children. At the bivariate level the
relationship between education and desire for additional children is positive in Central province
but negative in Coast province. Further, education is not significantly associated with desire for
additional children at the multivariate level in Central province but is significantly associated
in case of Coast province. For Central province one of the explanations for this is that as
education spreads and gains ground in a community, even women with a few years of
education start to adopt the same family size ideals as women with at least secondary
education. Consequently, the fertility desires of women with some sought of education starts
to decrease. During this period, fertility desires of women with some education may be found
to be similar to those with no education. Therefore education stops being a major factor
determining, fertility desires.
Place of residence is significantly associated with desire for additional children in both
provinces. However differences between the two provinces are seen in that contrary to our
hypothesis desire for addition children is higher among rural women than urban women in
Central province. This is as a result of the fact that a greater percentage of rural women have
more children than urban women and the proportion of women wanting no more children rises
with the number of living children. | en |
