all of our regressions<sup>9</sup> . Family planning in Kenya underwent a few clear changes since the 1950s (see Table 3 and Figure 3). While the proportion of women who married before 19 or had their first child before 20 decreased substantially (respectively 64 to 46% and 72 to 58%), the proportion of girls who had their first sexual intercourse before 19 rose steadily. The large fall in teenage pregnancy rates is confirmed by the steady decline in the total number of children a women had by age 25: while the earlier cohorts had on average 3 children, the latest ones had 1.5. This drastic reduction (one half) reflects women’s desire for less children: women born in the late 1950s wanted 12 children, women born in the late 1970s want less than 7. As expected, Kenyan women’s education improved greatly over the second half of the twentieth century. The proportion of women with no education was divided by 4, most of whom started primary school without finishing. The proportion of primary school graduates increased from 31 to 39%, that of secondary graduates more than doubled (7 to 17%), while the proportion of women going to university went twofold from 3 to 7%. All other characteristics at the national level do not show any evolution between the 1964-1968 and 1969-1973 cohorts: neither the place of birth, nor the religious views or the ethnicity show any statistically significant difference. However, one should notice a shift of the population towards urban areas, as well as some shifts in the ethnic composition of women.

**_Ethnic boundaries in Kenya, to a very large extent, are codeterminous with political and administrative boundaries_** (Fapohunda and Poukouta (1997)). Since DHS questionnaires do not record the province of childhood, ethnic groups can serve as good proxies for regions: the Kalenjin reside in the Rift Valley, the Kikuyu in the Central region (but have also migrated to Nairobi and the Rift Valley). The Embu/Meru live in the North and East. The Luhya live in the Western province (but have also migrated to Nairobi or Mombasa). The Luo and Kisii live in Nyanza. The Kamba live in the East and close to Nairobi. In addition, each woman’s childhood place of residence is recorded as: city, town, countryside or abroad. As people living in urban areas are exposed to a more diverse lifestyle and subject to weaker social control, we expect women who grew up in cities and towns to have lower levels of teenage pregnancy. On the other hand, rural areas are expected to have institutional and normative structures as the kinship and extended family that promote early marriage and childbearing.

3.2 Schooling System in Kenya

**_Shortly after independence from Britain, in 1964, the Ominde Commission was set up, and Kenya adopted its first educational system._** The Ominde Commission, whose focus was on secondary education, saw schooling as a productive investment, not only at the individual level, but also for the society as a whole. Under self-government<sup>10</sup> , different changes were made to the educational system inherited from the United Kingdom. The structure was changed and the 7-4-23-systen was adopted: 7 years of primary school, 4 years of lower secondary, 2 years of upper secondary and three years of university (see Figure 4). The most significant change was the abolition of school fees in 1971, up to the 4th year of primary school in the arid and semi-arid land (ASALs). In 1973, the decree was extended to most of the country up to the 6th year of primary school.

**_In 1985, Kenya increased the length of primary schooling by one year, thus postponing primary and secondary school degrees._** In 1981, the Presidential Working Party on the Second

> 9 Recall is calculated as the number of years between a woman’s interview and the year she gave birth to her first child. Survey years (KDHS-89, KDHS-93, KDHS-98 and KDHS-03) are controlled for with survey fixed-effects.

> 10 I.e. after Independence.

9