1in8B › Odds by country › Kenya

If you were born in Kenya

1 in 87 babies on Earth is born in Kenya, about 1.52 million a year. If your birthplace were drawn by lot, you would be born here with a chance of 1 in 87. Below is what awaits a child born here, according to the statistics, and three lives lived here in the game.

What stands out here

People here live 9.6 years less than the world average: 63.9 years against 73.5 years.
3.9 in 100 children here die before age five, about the world average.
The World Bank classes it as a lower-middle-income country. There are 46 such countries, and 46 in 100 of the world’s babies are born in them.
Women here have 3.2 children on average; the world average is 2.2.
It is one of the ten countries with the most road deaths in the world: 28.2 per 100,000 people a year.

The odds in numbers

Indicator	Kenya	World
Births a year	1,521,884	132,315,943
Chance of being born here	1 in 87	—
Life expectancy, men	61.6 years	71 years
Life expectancy, women	66.1 years	75.9 years
Die before age 1, per 100 children	3.4	2.8
Die before age 5, per 100 children	3.9	3.7
Die between ages 15 and 60, per 100 men	35	17
Die between ages 15 and 60, per 100 women	27	11
Maternal deaths per 100,000 births	149	187
Children per woman	3.2	2.2
GDP per person a year, at purchasing power parity	$7,020	$25,400
Income inequality, Gini index (0–100)	38.5	—
Can read and write, per 100 adults	82	86
Average years of schooling, adults	8.6 years	8.4 years
University enrolment, gross ratio (can exceed 100)	10	48
Married before 18, per 100 young women	13	16
Live in cities, per 100	32	58
Work in farming, per 100 workers	46	27
Working or looking for work, per 100 women	63	48
Living with HIV, per 100 adults aged 15–49	3	0.7
Homicides per 100,000 people a year	4.9	4.8
Road deaths per 100,000 people a year	28.2	15
Suicides per 100,000 people a year	4.6	9.1
Use tobacco, per 100 adults	9.6	20
Born in another country, per 100 residents	1.8	3.7
Life evaluation, 0 to 10	4.7	5.4

“World” is the average weighted by population, and by births for child and maternal mortality. ≈ marks an estimate: there is no published figure for this country.

Three lives lived here in the game

This is how the life of a child born in Kenya could turn out. The game lived 20 lives on its own, with no player, by this country’s numbers. Here are three of them: one of the shortest, the middle one and one of the longest.

Brenda Cheruiyot
Born in 2026 in rural Kenya, into a middle-income family. Education: finished school. 38 years of work, last as taxi driver. Moved to Canada. Married. Age at death: 58 years. Cause: a heart attack.
Jepkosgei Musyoka
Born in 2026 in rural Kenya, into a well-off family. Education: finished school. 51 years of work, last as herder. Divorced. 4 children. 15 grandchildren. Age at death: 71 years. Cause: cancer.
Lucy Njuguna
Born in 2026 in rural Kenya, into a well-off family. Education: finished school. 54 years of work. Divorced. 4 children. 13 grandchildren. Age at death: 89 years. Cause: chronic lung disease.

These people are made up, and three lives are not statistics. The real numbers are in the table above.

You cannot pick a country in 1in8B: the draw decides. This one comes up with a chance of 1 in 87.

Be born

Other countries

Data: the UN, the World Bank (release of October 8, 2026), WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, the ILO and the World Happiness Report. Where the numbers come from and what in the game is real