Forget tyranny of numbers, smaller families hold key to a better Kenya

The news that Kigumo MP Jamleck Kamau was offering a token of Sh1,000 to pregnant women in Murang’a as a reward for their efforts sounded like an April Fool’s Day story, but it turned out to be true.

A search on Google returned images of the MP giving out the cash on camera amid much song and dance.

To his credit, Kamau did not engage in the “tyranny of numbers” speechmaking you would expect to hear at such a function, but the unspoken message was clear: We need more babies!

The truth is that Kenya needs fewer, not more, babies. The Kigumo MP was reacting to a widely reported decline in fertility levels in many parts of Central Kenya.

Nursery schools have been closed, the media has told us, while there are far more girls in school than boys.

The reason local leaders offer for this – consumption of too much kumi kumi and other brews – is sensational but misleading.

A look at data from the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey reveals a more straightforward explanation.

Women in Central Kenya have among the highest rates of contraceptive use in East Africa.

Contraceptive use among married women between the ages of 15-49 in Kenya in 1998 stood at 39 per cent compared to 22 per cent in Uganda and 25 per cent in Tanzania.

A breakdown of the figures shows that the use of contraceptives was highest in Central Kenya (61 per cent) with Nairobi second at 59 per cent.
A decade and half down the line, it should surprise no one that population levels in the region are on the decline.

Looked at through a political lens, this can be seen as a cause for alarm. What will happen to the “tyranny of numbers”? Are the Kikuyu staring at extinction?

UNHELPFUL NARRATIVES

These are simplistic and unhelpful narratives. First, it is unclear that Kenyan politics will always revolve around the crude aggregation of ethnic numbers.

Politics is dynamic. In the age of devolution, grabbing central authority will probably gradually lose its appeal, and people will focus more on better governance at the local level.

More importantly, though, economic experience almost everywhere shows that individuals who delay marriage and have fewer children in the long run enjoy a more prosperous life than those who marry early and have more children.

Any politician urging people to have more children is, therefore, doing them a great disservice.

The most dramatic illustration of this comes from America. Over the last few decades, a number of books have been published studying a peculiar phenomenon.

Why is it that “Red States” with high numbers of Evangelicals and Republican “values voters” where sex education is discouraged and abortion frowned upon have the highest rates of divorce and teenage pregnancy?

By contrast, the “Blue States” in the liberal Northeast and mid-Atlantic, which tend to vote for the Democrats and are more relaxed about these things, have lower levels of divorce and teenage pregnancy and in general enjoy higher average family incomes.

One of the key findings of the studies was that those who marry late and plan their families more can expect, in general, more satisfactory living standards.

As one report in the New Yorker put it: “Of all variables, the age at marriage may be the pivotal difference between red and blue families. The five states with the lowest median age at marriage are Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas, and Kentucky, all red states, while those with the highest are all blue: Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

The red-state model puts couples at greater risk for divorce; women who marry before their mid-twenties are significantly more likely to divorce than those who marry later.

Younger couples are more likely to be contending with two of the biggest stressors on a marriage: financial struggles and birth of a baby before, or soon after, the wedding.”

Marriage is a good thing, and having babies an even better one. But all the evidence suggests that having fewer kids later rather than bringing forth a tyranny of numbers leads to a better life for all, but especially for mothers.

To prosper, Kenya needs more family planning, not less.

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