Uptake of health insurance by the informal sector workers at Kenyatta market, Kibra sub-county, Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

The uptake rate of health insurance in many countries is quite low, particularly in Africa and East Asia. In Kenya, the National Health Insurance has been lowly taken up by employees involved in the informal economy, this has been credited to a host of factors. This paper assessed the influence of education level, income level, marital status, and religious affiliations on the rate at which the National Health Insurance is taken up by informal sector employees in Kenyatta market. The theories of Maslow hierarchy of needs and Planned behaviour were anchors for the study. Descriptive research design was used. A sample of 241 respondents was chosen from the different strata identified based on a simple random sampling technique. Instruments validity was checked by experts in the field while Cronbach alpha coefficient was used in checking reliability. The findings show that only 64.4% of the sampled respondents had enrolled in NHIF scheme despite government policy that every Kenyan 18 years and above must enroll for NHIF. In addition, based on the binary logistic regression, it was found that education and income were positive significant predictors of NHIF uptake, religious affiliations have a negative influence on uptake of NHIF, and marital status was not a significant predictor of uptake of NHIF. The study findings will be significant to researchers in the area of project management in particular health projects financing.