Fertility and Household Economic Outcomes among Poor Urban Households in Nairobi informal Settlements, Kenya

Abstract

We use longitudinal data on 6,324 households from the Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System and a multidimensional poverty index to investigate the effects of birth of additional children on household poverty transitions between 2006 and 2009. Overall we find more households falling into than moving out of poverty, while more households remained in chronic poverty than those who stayed out of poverty over the study period. Having a birth in a household is a significant net predictor of a household falling into poverty and lessens their prospects of moving out of poverty over the observation period. Following the inevitable expenditures associated with infants’ total care, our findings provide compelling quantitative support for anti-poverty interventions that include the promotion of voluntary family planning programs and smaller family size norms as part of the strategies to address persistent poverty among the urban poor