MODELLING THE EFFECT OF COVID– 19 MORTALITY SHOCK ON FERTILITY RATE IN KENYA USING NEGATIVE BINOMIAL REGRESSION MODEL

Abstract

Fertility is known as one of the three primary components that determine the struc ture, size, and composition of the population of any country, the other two being mortality and migration. Mortality has been shown to have some effects on fertil ity by various researchers. The world has experienced mortality shocks as a result of various deadly disasters that have previously occurred, from the influenza epi demics of 1918 to COVID-19 that was first reported in 2019. Various studies have been conducted by various researchers on the effects of mortality shocks on fertil ity but little documentation on effect of mortality shock as a result of COVID-19 on fertility is available. Some of the mortality shocks experienced were as a re sult of epidemics, natural calamities and violences i.e influenza epidemic, spanish f lu, famines, genocides, tsunamis, earthquakes, ebola and severe acute respiratory syndrome virus. More recently the world experienced COVID-19 epidemic which resulted into mortality shock. Few empirical studies have examined the impact of the COVID-19 mortality shock on fertility. This study addresses this gap by mod eling the effect of COVID-19–related mortality on fertility rates in Kenya using the Negative Binomial Regression model. The study used secondary data from KDHS. Parameters were etimated using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), R- soft ware was used for analysis. Results of analysis based on both IRR and p-values revealed that the effect of COVID-19 mortality shock was significant on fertility rate. There was a slightly higher expected count value of 7.488 after COVID-19 compared to 7.146 Before COVID-19. The two values were statistically significant at α =0.05. Thedispersion parameters of 1.537 and 1.572 had a minimal difference, indicating that both models captured overdispersion similarly. The significance of this study is that it offers key insights into how mortality shocks like COVID-19 af fect fertility trends in Kenya, providing evidence to guide demographic projections, policy decisions, and further research on the links between health crises, reproduc tive behavior, and population dynamics. The study concluded that the COVID-19 mortality shock had a positive impact on fertility.