PERIOD AND COHORT DYNAMICS IN FERTILITY NORMS AT THE ONSET OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION IN KENYA 1978–1998

Summary.

A characteristic of African pre-transitional fertility regimes is large ideal family size. This has been used to support claims of cultural entrenchment of high fertility. Yet in Kenya fertility rates have fallen. In this paper this fall is explored in relation to trends in fertility norms and attitudes using four sequential cross-sectional surveys spanning the fertility transition in Kenya (1978, 1984, 1989 and 1998). The most rapid fall in the reported ideal family size occurred between 1984 and 1989, whilst the most rapid fall in the total fertility rate occurred 5 to 10 years later, between 1989 and 1998. Thus these data, spanning the fertility transition in Kenya, support the traditional demographic model that demand for fertility limitation drives fertility decline. These data also suggest that the decline in fertility norms over time was partly a period effect, as the reported ideal family size was seen to fall simultaneously in all age cohorts, and partly a cohort effect, as older age cohorts reporting higher ideal family sizes were replaced by younger cohorts reporting lower ideal family sizes. These data also suggest that a new fertility norm of four children may have developed by 1989 and continued until 1998. This is consistent with, and perhaps could have been used to predict, the stall in the Kenyan fertility decline after 1998.