The Population of Baringo County

In this article, I intend to analyze the structure of the population in Baringo county. The main source of the data is the 2009 population census. Some of the issues I intend to address include:

1. How is the population distributed across the region?
2. How is the population distributed across the generations?
3. How is the population distributed among the sexes?
4. What will be the age structure of voters in 2012?

Unfortunately, the Census data was not aggregated according to the new districts, but rather the districts as at 2009. We start our analysis with the regional distribution:

As can be seen, the population is nearly equally distributed among the four major Baringo districts. Interesting, Baringo North has a higher share of old people while Pokot shows significant old population shrinkage. This may point at emigration, or low life expectancy among others.

As far as gender is concerned, the distribution is as follows:

From this we note that Koibatek has a very uniform distribution among the genders at all ages. The other districts show suspect variations, but at this point it is difficult to attribute it to any single factor.

The next factor to consider is the distribution among the generations.

All the districts have very young populations. Using the 2009 Census results, Baringo county has a population of 555,621 people. Working with this figure, the percentage of the different age groups in this population is shown below.

Age Group	%	Cumulative Percentage
0 to 4	16.5	16.5
5 to 9	16.5	33.0
10 to 14	15.4	48.4
15 to 19	11.7	60.2
20 to 24	8.6	68.8
25 to 29	6.9	75.8
30 to 34	5.1	81.0
35 to 39	4.3	85.3
40 to 44	3.1	88.5
45 to 49	2.8	91.3
50 to 54	2.2	93.5
55 to 59	1.6	95.2
60 to 64	1.5	96.7
65 to 69	0.9	97.6
70 to 74	0.8	98.5
75 to 79	0.5	99.0
80 +	1.0	100.0

As can be seen from the above data, nearly 60% of the population was under 18 in 2009! This means that a lot of work needs to be done to ensure that this young generation gets good education. With only 349 primary schools, this is a big problem. These children will also require jobs starting 10 year from now. Cutting off the current population at 14, we obtain that in 2012, we will have 286,533 voters. Their population will be distributed as follows:

Age Group									%															Cumulative Percentage
17 to 22									22.7															22.72
23 to 27									16.7															39.45
28 to 32									13.6															53.01
33 to 37									10.0															63.08
38 to 42									8.4															71.49
43 to 47									6.1															77.62
48 to 52									5.6															83.19
53 to 57									4.2															87.47
58 to 62									3.2															90.73
63 to 67									2.9															93.61
68 to 72									1.8															95.41
73 to 77									1.6															97.03
78 to 82									1.1															98.08
83 +									1.9															100.0

This of course does not take into consideration migration patterns and mortality. As you can see, over 50% of the voters in 2012 will be the youth (under 30). I strongly believe social media will play a significant role at that time.

In a future article, I hope to address the following issues concerning the Baringo population:

1. Migration patterns
2. Income distribution, purchasing power and employment among the Baringo county population.
3. Education levels