KNBS: Births to single mothers rise 1.3 per cent in 2025

The number of children born to single mothers increased despite married women accounting for over 85 per cent of all kids born last year.

According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) Economic Survey report, 168,158 children were born to single mothers in 2025, compared to 148,657 the previous year.

“The proportion of registered births to single mothers increased to 14.7 per cent in 2025 from 13.4 per cent in 2024,” the KNBS report states with 1,144,847 births recorded last year.

Married women had the highest proportion of registered births, accounting for 85.1 per cent in 2025, compared to 86.3 per cent in 2024. 974,154 were born to married women last year compared to 957,942 in 2024.

Despite this category's dominance,  the data shows that kids born to married women declined by a 1.2 per cent margin. 

Divorced and widowed mothers accounted for only 0.1 per cent each of the registered births, while births with unknown or not stated marital status declined from 0.2 per cent in 2024 to 0.1 per cent in 2025.

The total number of registered births increased by 3.1 per cent in 2025. Over the review period, health facilities consistently accounted for more than 97 per cent of all registered births, highlighting the continued predominance of facility-based deliveries in the country.

In 2025, 98.6 per cent of registered births occurred in health facilities, consistently remaining the same since 2023.

On age, the highest number of registered births was for mothers aged 20–24, accounting for about one-third of births over the period 2021 to 2025.

“Proportion of births to teen mothers aged 15–19 slightly increased from 11.1 per cent in 2024 to 11.5 per cent in 2025, while proportion of births to mothers aged 25–29 also rose from 25.2 per cent to 26.4 per cent, over the same period,” the report indicates.

In 2025, 588,338 (51.4 %) births were male and 556,492 (48.6 %) were female with KNBS stating that the distribution was similar to that observed in 2024.

The sex ratio at birth remained at 106 males per 100 females in 2025, the same as in 2024. The number of births recorded as intersex, rose from 9 cases in 2024 to 17 cases in 2025.

In terms of child adoptions, in 2025, a total of 472 child adoptions were registered with more female (55.1%) than male (44.9%).

The number of male adoptions increased from 170 in 2024 to 212 in 2025, while female adoptions rose from 166 in 2024 to 260 in 2025.

Over the review period, the highest number of adoptions were registered in 2023 (473) and the lowest in 2022 (297).

There were more male registered adoptions in four out of five years, except in 2025 when registered female adoptions (260) were higher than registered male adoptions (212).