dc.description.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.
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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. | en |