An Interpretation of Fertility and Population Policy in Kenya
Over the past three decades, rapid fertility transitions have been observed in a majority of developing countries. Between the early 1960s (1960-65) and the late 1980s (1985-90), the total fertility rate of the developing world as a whole declined by an estimated 36 percent – from 6.0 to 3.8 births per woman (1995). Declines have been most rapid in Asia and Latin America (-42 and -43 percent respectively), less rapid but still substantial in the Middle East and North Africa (-25 percent). These averages conceal wide variations among countries in the timing of the onset of transitions and their subsequent pace.
The causes of fertility control have been subject to some arguments. According to (1953), as a society develops, economic and social changes such as industrialization, urbanization, and increased education first lead to a decline in mortality, and subsequently also to a decline in fertility. Notestein believed that the rising cost and declining economic value of children are the driving forces of fertility decline. The weakened motivation for having children, together with increased child survival, leads to the adoption of fertility control.
In the attempt of the theory of (1986), they have found two key conclusions. First, socioeconomic conditions were only weakly predictive of fertility declines, and transitions started at widely varying levels of development; and once a region in a country had begun a decline, neighboring regions with the same language or culture followed after short delays, even when they were less developed. The findings were unexpected and did not fit existing thinking about the demographic transition. Another body of empirical work was stimulated by the microeconomic theories of (1981), but evaluations of these theories with data from surveys of individuals in 42 developing countries did not find the expected dominant influence of socioeconomic characteristics on fertility (1987).
Most contemporary analysts accept development as one of the driving forces of fertility transition, but they vigorously debate the precise variables and processes involved ( 1978 ;1982). A recent review of the literature by (1994) concludes, “The dilemma is that there is no consensus on an alternative theory to replace demographic transition theory.”
Population Policy in Kenya
A private family planning policy in Kenya began in the 1950s at the initiative of a British official, a few Indian elites and indigenous locals such as . with the highest rank in Kenyan medical official, had gone to England to study tuberculosis, took a two week training in family planning offered by the International Family Planning Federation. , who become the Permanent Secretary of the Labor and Social Services had studied at Oxford, where his economics courses presented the consequences of rapid population growth. Mwathi and Ndisi and others joined and formed a private association to promote population control and family planning.
The first neo-Malthusian to influence the Kenyan government started in April 1965, when parliament adopted African Socialism (an important Sessional Paper that contains the memo’s neo-Malthusian analysis). The neo-Malthusian international population movement was an alliance of population controllers alarmed about the expected consequences of “third world” population growth and family planning advocates who wanted women to be able to control their fertility using clinic-based methods of contraception ( 1997). However, Kenya still acknowledges solidarity of rejecting Western economic imperialism while taking a socialist route. The government of Kenya’s economic liberalism has been attributed to the desire of the country for foreign capital (1992, 1981). The officials are expressed an interest of learning more about population control and in assistance however they are not interested in implementing the program. The problem of the program in that time was that the people in Kenya believes that black people were gradually eliminated on an already sparsely populated continent and the Western races were expanding their wealth and population of Africa’s expense. According to (1994), “Throughout much of black Africa, it is fair to say, family planning at that time was seen as a ‘white imperialist plot’, a form of neocolonialism designed to ensure the continued subjugation of the black race to Western interests long after the last echoes of Uhuru have died away.” Not only did fertility not fall in Kenya following the adoption of a population policy, it rose (1993).
Population and development
(1798) well known forecast that exponential growth in population would outrun linear growth in food supply, was negated by the nineteenth century expansion in cultivated land. From the 1960s onward a neo-Malthusian view arose, the leading advocates being (1968) and (1990), the ‘Club of Rome’ (1972), and more recently the ( 1994). These authors take the view that the world is already too highly populated to sustain its limited resources, leading to food shortages, pollution, deforestation and over-exploitation of non-renewable natural resources.
Economists have traditionally rejected the view that population increase adversely affects development, but there are signs of a shift in this attitude. In a symposium, Population matters (2001), nineteen academics, mainly economists, put forward a view which they entitled ‘revisionism’, arguing that rapid population growth in developing countries has an important negative impact on economic growth, poverty, inequality, and sustainable use of natural resources; conversely, decline in human fertility makes a quantitatively relevant contribution to reducing poverty.
Most discussions on the effects of population increase on development have come from economists and demographers. The arguments set out in the present paper originate from a very different standpoint that of a natural resource scientist, originally a soil surveyor and later working in land evaluation, land use planning, and land resource management and policy. The conclusions reached represent the outcome of more than 40 years’ research in developing countries. Given the considerable unreliability of international statistics sources on land ( 1998), much use will be made of the traditional geographical method of field observation. This leads to the conclusion that efforts to reduce poverty and hunger, and the suffering which these cause, will fail unless international institutions recognize that population is not an independent, or ‘given’, variable, but is an integral part of development.
In Kenya, the essence of fertility transition is a movement from uncontrolled natural fertility regime to a planned childbearing and attempt to reach some target family size using whatever means are at their disposal. The relatively constant total fertility rates of more than 8.0 during the 1960s and 1970s almost certainly indicate that natural fertility prevailed in Kenya at that time.
It is noticeable that the situation of Kenya has changed dramatically in the decade. Moreover, there are now quite striking variations in fertility and also in the proximate determinants at the province and district level. Thus, it seems that natural fertility is giving way to planned fertility.
In (1985) most widely known theoretical framework suggests that couples do attempt to maximize over time the wellbeing of their immediate household/family group and that fertility plans are made in this context. That is, the expected benefits to the household or gains from children are balanced against perceived costs and disadvantages, and a target outcome results. Thus, socioeconomic factors affect fertility plans by affecting the perceptions of the benefits and costs of various family sizes. Government policies and programs also will have an effect on fertility through these channels. Fertility intentions become real fertility outcomes through the use of some technology to control fertility. The availability of modern contraceptives can also affect fertility outcomes by making couples more effective planners. According to (1977), policy and program have effects, in this fashion, by introducing the means of contraception, or making them cheaper.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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