Kenyan men now ‘running away’ from marriage, new report reveals
The number of men who avoid marriage in the country has increased, a new report has revealed.
The 2019 census assessment report released this week by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistic (KNBS), shows that the number of men aging unmarried is higher than unmarried women.
According to the report, the number of men who marry late has also been increasing since the 1980s. According to the report, the majority of men are now marrying at the age of 29 as opposed to earlier years when men married at the age of 25.
On the other hand, many women now prefer getting married at the age 25 as opposed to the 1980s where the average marriage age was 21.
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The increase in men avoiding, or delaying marriage, may be attributed to difficult economic conditions, religious beliefs, studies and personal decisions.
The report also shows that a large number of men rush to remarry when their wives die or divorce their wives.
That is confirmed by the large number of women who said they were widowed or divorced from their husbands during the 2019 census.
According to the data, 7 per cent of women said that they were widowed while only one per cent of men said that they lost their wives.
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“It is also clear that many women refrain from having more children compared to previous years. This might be because of the economic,” the report says.
Currently, most women are having a total of only three children compared to ten years ago when women were having up to seven children.
In addition, women are now delaying before having children compared to earlier years.
This is demonstrated in the study where most women have an abortion at the age of 25 compared to 10 years ago when the reproductive journey was starting early at the age of 20.
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