Why Small Families are Bad for Kenya's Economy: A Response
Over the weekend, I came across this article in The Daily Nation: Why small families are bad for Kenya’s economy. And to quote Peter Griffin, it really ground my gears.
In the article, Peter Mburu explains that while Kenya's smaller family units and lower fertility rate may be beneficial for individual families and their needs, it does not serve the needs of the wider economy in the long run. An economy survives on a dynamic and young labour force to drive production and consumption. Without this force, economies, and the societies that power them, begin to struggle. As a result, a number of economists in Kenya are raising alarm bells at Kenya's declining fertility rates. In the last 33 years, the number of children women borne by Kenya has fallen by half; from around 7 to 3.
Now, here's the thing. I don't necessarily disagree with Mburu. I merely disagree with the details.
First, small families can be bad for our economy if people are having less than our replacement rate. Where the fertility rate measures how many children each woman has, the replacement rate tells us how many children each woman needs to have to replace the next generation. In Kenya, our replacement is 3 children per woman; perfectly matched to our fertility rate. Unfortunately, Kenya's fertility rate is falling. Thus, the question becomes how do we maintain? Has the government created an enabling environment for child-rearing for all members of society? This is something Mburu considers anecdotally, but does not delve into.
On the subject of the future, the second detail I disagree with is the things Mburu leaves unsaid. If small families are bad for Kenya's economy, then large families must be good for the economy. Right? I wish Mburu had inserted a caveat here to explain that this is not the case. Right now, the Kenyan economy is not making enough jobs for the people that are already here; so much so that the Kenyan government is pursuing a labour-as-an-export strategy to occupy our surplus. Having large families will not solve this problem, and will, in fact, create even more.
Unfortunately, while Mburu competently captures the anxiety of smaller families, his article does not consider the alternative in rendering his absolute conclusion. This makes for an article that is less knowledgeable than it ought to be. An article that, in the hands of enterprising politicians looking for a distraction, could spur another moral panic with disastrous consequences on female bodily autonomy and women in the workplace. And while Mburu is not responsible for enabling another to act in bad faith, I believe he does have a responsibility to limit such exposure.
As a result, I merely wish Mburu had asked the alternative: How might small families be good for Kenya's economy? And if, indeed, small families are only bad for Kenyan families, what can we do about it? In light of socioeconomic pressures motivating men and women to pursue parenthood later and later in life, how do we encourage people like me, to have more children?
Yet, the above is merely the icing on top of my irritation fruit cake. The proverbial raisins are, of course, the thinking that underpins Mburu's article. I am uniquely triggered by his subscription to the conceptualisation of human value within a capitalistic system. In arguing that small families are bad for Kenya's economy because they will limit economic growth, he advances the idea that humans are only valuable under capitalism for their ability to consume and produce. This is part of the logic that underpins and animates our disregard for the disabled or the poor. For, the presumption is, the amount these marginalised communities could produce or consume is not worth the investment it takes to enable both. At least, in a way that isn't exploitative.
Put simply, under capitalism, we are worth our output. The more we produce, we more we accumulate; the more our lives our worth. Sure, we are all equal. But the variances in our productivity allow some of us to be more equal than others. Under capitalism, we don't get points for simply existing. Especially after we turn 18 as Seren Sensei articulately argues:
We enter into this social contract at roughly the age of 18, where we are required to generate capital – aka work — in order to survive, but we are not, or no longer, promised anything in return. Yet we are told that our ability to generate capital for a capitalist society is what determines our value, otherwise, we are pointedly worthless.
To argue that the wealth of a nation is intimately tied to the quantity, and not both the quantity and quality, of its productive labour not only subscribe to this idea, by reducing the value of human life to numbers on a program. Yet, all this purple prose cannot distort our current reality. For worse, we live in a society that limits the value of human life. A society that sets its metrics based upon the productivity, potential or otherwise, on this value. And in this society, smaller families are bad for the economy. Even though the children within them seem to benefit from this arrangement. A 2006 study of Chinese children comparing twins and 'single children' found that, in at least one area in China, the presence of an additional child substantially limited how well the child performed in school and the overall health of all children in the family.
While we ought not to compare these benefits with the associated costs of smaller families (i.e. lower rates of savings as a result of the concentrated pressure placed upon a smaller number of young people to support a higher number of older people), such a comparison suggests that the latter may outweigh the former. At least in utilitarian terms. As the International Growth Centre argues, even though smaller families may increase overall savings over time, these increases "may be transitory, and as populations begin ageing, a declining ratio of working-aged to retired workers may reduce long-run savings rates." Put within the context of this response, even though children will benefit from smaller families in the short run, they will struggle in the long run.
Ultimately, I understand what Mburu was trying to do with the article (to reiterate and convey the anxiety and future harm of the declining fertility rate). I wish he had taken the time to paint a more complex, and therefore vibrant, picture. I hope he comes out with a series that tackles this issue in greater depth because it is an important conversation we need to have. Perhaps, he could write a feature that explains why men and women are having children later – beyond later marriages in order to account for the rise in the number of single mothers. Another that explains the ways our economy has changed to motivate and reinforce a lower fertility rate – for example, the idea that Kenya is, now, a service-based economy that is not as labour-intensive. One that explores the relationship between economic wealth and fertility, accounting for the impact of the black tax.
I just hope that this article is not the end of his coverage, but the beginning of a necessary dialogue.
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