2009 Kenya Population and Housing Census “Counting Our People for Implementation of Vision 2030” Volume IV Household and Family Dynamics

Abstract

A population and housing census concerns not only counting persons in a country, but also with identification of household and family groupings. The household and family grouping is the way in which individual people combine together to satisfy their living needs. Although information pertaining to households has always been collected in population and housing censuses in Kenya since 1962, little information pertaining to households and family dynamics has been published. This monograph provides information relevant to policy makers, researchers and private the sector on the characteristics of households and families. The household is the basic socio-economic unit in all countries and is central to the study of social and economic development. The number, size and structure of households and changes in the rate of household formation are useful for planning and developing special policies formulated for selected groups of the population, such as children, the elderly and persons with disabilities. The number of conventional households grew from about 6.3 million in 1999 to about 8.8 million in 2009. The growth rate declined from 4.6 in the 1989-99 intercensal period to about 3.6 in the in the 1999-2009 intercensal period. There has been a massive decline in annual growth rate of households in rural areas and a dramatic rise in the urban household growth rates. The growth rates at provincial level follow the national growth rate except for North Eastern where there was a high increase. The massive increase in the number of households in the 1999 and 2009 censuses for North Eastern is however suspect as this implies a rapid increase in the population eligible to form households. This can only be supported by large number of in-migrants into the region. Household size and structure is related to development and environment factors since private consumption patterns are mostly defined in terms of household consumption but not individual consumption. Three indicators are used to express the sizes of households; average size, the proportion of 1- member households and the proportion of households with 9 or more members. The average size of households is about 4.4, which has not changed much since 1999. Nairobi and Western provinces did not register any change in average size while average household size declined in Central, Eastern and Coast provinces. The average size for counties varies from a high of 8.2 in Mandera to a low of 3.2 in Nairobi. High average household sizes are in Mandera 8.2, Wajir 7.4, Turkana 6.9 and Garissa 6.3. The lowest average household size was in Nairobi 3.2, followed by Mombasa, Kiambu, Kirinyaga and Nyeri 3.4. The high average household size in Mandera, Wajir, Turkana and Garissa is suspicious and seem implausible from past trends. In every county, the average household size has been declining or almost constant since 1969 however; the average size increased in Mandera, Wajir and Garissa. Sixteen percent of households have only one person while about 3 percent have 10 or more persons. One person households is more common in urban areas compared to the rural areas while rural areas tend to have large households (9 or more persons). Turkana, Wajir and Mandera have extremely low proportions of small size households and also unusually high proportions of large households. The cases of Mandera, Wajir and Turkana are exceptionally high and seem to suggest over reporting of number of household members. Slightly over half of households have no children while 3 percent have 3 or more children living in the households. Nairobi has the highest proportion of households with no children and North Eastern the lowest. About in every 10 households reported having an orphan while about 3 percent have 3 or more orphans. Relatively, there is a high proportion of rural households caring for orphans. Households in Nyanza Province are more likely to have orphans compared to other provinces. Western and Nairobi have the lowest proportion of households with orphans. Nearly 9 out of every 10 households do not report having any birth. Nairobi and Central Provinces had less than 10 percent of the households with a birth. About 3 percent of the households had at least one death in the household. North Eastern Province has the highest proportion, 4.5 percent of households with one or more deaths. The United Nations recommendations for expanded census enumeration and tabulation have made a number of countries to collect more detailed demographic and socio-economic characteristics of families, households and housing since 1950s. The most prevalent family type is the nuclear although non family households are beginning to emerge especially in the urban areas. One of the ways of understanding the nature of the households is through the characteristics of the household head. The characteristics of the household head are associated with the household welfare. About 56 percent of adult males and 25 percent of adult females are heads of households. These proportions can be regarded as the crude headship rates. About 9 percent of household heads are youth age group 15-24 while 15 percent are elderly persons. The proportion of youth heads of households varies from about five percent in North Eastern Province to about 14 percent in Nairobi. Among the households headed by men, the youth head about 9 percent of the households while elderly head 13 percent respectively. Female youth head about 11 percent of the households headed by women. Elderly women head about one fifth of the total households headed by women. The proportion of households headed by male youth varies from a low of less than one percent in Nyeri to about 13 percent in Nairobi. The proportion of households headed by female youth varies from less than one percent in Nyeri to a high of 21 percent in Samburu. Low proportion of youth heads in Nyeri may be associated with late family formation while in Samburu associated with early marriage and absentee youth spouses. In Nairobi, the high proportion may be due to migration into the city in search of jobs and training opportunities.