Colonial legacies, ethnicity and fertility decline in Kenya - What has financial inclusion got to do with it?

Duvendack, Maren ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8125-9115 and Palmer-Jones, Richard (2023) Colonial legacies, ethnicity and fertility decline in Kenya - What has financial inclusion got to do with it? European Journal of Development Research, 35 (5). 1028–1058. ISSN 0957-8811

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Abstract

Kenya has seen unprecedented declines in fertility from the late 1970s, which stalled during the decade from the mid-1990s, only to resume in the early 2000s when Kenya experienced rapid growth in financial inclusion. In this paper, we do not intend to make causal explanations of these phenomena; instead, we explore what may be sensible to adduce from relationships between fertility and financial inclusion. The Kenyan context presents some unique challenges to establish such connections; regional geographic and ethnic differences, spatial and temporal uneven economic growth, diverse legacies of colonialism, all of which may have affected how fertility trends and financial inclusion activities played out. We find that while modernisation variables such as urbanisation, education, wealth and employment are convincingly related to lower fertility levels, there is little plausible evidence of a role for financial inclusion. More plausible explanations may be found in the country’s colonial history, ethnic identities and post-independence politics.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Funding Information: We acknowledge, without implication, funding by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under a research grant, ESRC Reference: ES/N013344/2, on ‘Delivering inclusive financial development and growth’.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	colonial legacies,ethnicity,fertility,financial inclusion,kenya,geography, planning and development,development,sdg 8 - decent work and economic growth ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3305
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Impact Evaluation Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Gender and Development
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	26 Jul 2022 12:30
Last Modified:	28 Sep 2023 09:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/86862
DOI:	10.1057/s41287-022-00557-7

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