A new study by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) has shown that Nairobi and Kiambu Counties host the highest number of rich people living in Kenya.
The two counties have a poverty incidence rate of 21.8 per cent for Nairobi and 24.2 per cent for Kiambu which is significantly low compared to that of Turkana which has the highest number of poor people at 87.5 per cent.
The study investigated whether or not members of the population could afford the basic food and non-food items and how much the individuals spent on them.
Eight out of 10 Nairobians were reported to spend about Sh3,000 monthly on food and non-food items while only one out of 10 people in Turkana could spend Sh1,562 monthly.
The report titled: "Spatial Dimension of Well-being in Kenya: Where are the Poor?" indicates that nearly half of the Kenyan population (45.2 percent) are living in poverty.
Embakasi West emerged as the constituency with the richest residents with a poverty incidence rate of 10.2 percent while the poorest constituency was Turkana East with a poverty incidence rate of 93.1 per cent.
The richest ward was found to be Lower Savannah in Embakasi East with a poverty incidence rate of 3.3 per cent while in Katilia Ward, Turkana, almost everyone is poor as the poverty incidence rate leads at 98.9 per cent.
The report also indicates that there is a direct correlation of the poverty rates with the level of urbanization.
"Nearly one in two people in rural Kenya are poor compared to only three in 10 in urban Kenya. Given that close to 70 per cent of Kenyans still live in rural areas, poverty is still more of a rural phenomenon," stated the report.
Interestingly, poverty was slightly higher in female-headed households (46.8 per cent) as compared to male-headed households which was at 44.6 per cent.
