Invisible Global Minority: Connecting Childhood Disability and Poverty in Kenya

• In Event: Child Poverty, Rights, and Policies: Perspectives From Five National Contexts

Abstract

Purpose
The overarching purpose of this study was to connect maternal health indices with disability risk factors among infants, toddlers and preschoolers in the general population of Kenya.

Perspectives and Theoretical Framework
The marginalization of disability in research and praxis in the global South (Author, 2001) has persisted, despite long standing estimates that 60-75% of the world’s population of individuals with disabilities live in low-income countries of the Global South (Mallory, Charlton, Nicholls, & Marfo, 1993). Recent estimates that 80% of disabled persons live in developing countries with 20% of the poorest people in those countries being those with disabilities and 85% being children (Helander, 1993). These statistics suggest that the global burden of disability disproportionately and adversely affects the most vulnerable population of the world’s children and adults in the neediest situations. Compounding these issues is the fact that in instances where studies have been conducted, disability and poverty have tended to be studied as separate strands (Erb & Harriss-White, 2001) thereby sidestepping the empirical connection between disability and poverty that is well established in Western countries.

Methods and Data Sources
Drawing from interview responses of a large sample of Kenya’s population of women with children under 5 years of age from the Kenya Demographic Health Survey, the current study connects disability risk factors and poverty among young children in Kenya. We draw upon postcolonial and disability studies, both as theoretical frameworks and as analytic tools to more adequately account for the invisibility of disability in Kenya’s discourse on early childhood education (Author, 2013).

Results
Results show that nearly all the potential disability risk factors were reported by mothers from rural areas compared to their urban counterparts. For instance, a higher proportion of rural mothers had no education, were poorest, never received prenatal care, had babies weighing lowest at birth, never been vaccinated including critical measles and polio immunizations.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study
Few studies (e.g., Yeo & Moore, 2003) have attempted to connect disability and poverty within low income countries. What is known and uncontested, however, is that the proportion of disability caused by environmental and biological risk factors such as communicable diseases, maternal and perinatal diseases are significantly higher in low-income nations compared to developed countries (Elwan, 1999). Additionally, children under age 5 in developing countries are exposed to multiple risks, including malnutrition, poor health, and under-stimulating home environments, which can impair cognitive, motor, and social-emotional development (WHO, 2011).

Study findings speak to critical issues related to early childhood education and early intervention that focuses not merely on the child, but on the social factors related to maternal education, access to medical care and the need for differentiated approaches in policy and program development that differentially responds to needs of rural vs. urban families. Also, these findings confirm what is already suspected or known about risk factor; that much of the disability in low-income countries is preventable.

Authors

• Kagendo Mutua, The University of Alabama

• George Mugoya, The University of Alabama