International Journal of

ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES

EISSN: 2313-3724, Print ISSN: 2313-626X

Frequency: 12

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 Volume 12, Issue 5 (May 2025), Pages: 10-17

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 Original Research Paper

Modeling the socioeconomic determinants of health insurance coverage among boda-boda riders in Kenya

 Author(s): 

 Perpetual Wambui Kihara 1, *, Zakayo Ndiku Morris 1, Nicholas Mutothya Mwilu 2

 Affiliation(s):

  1Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Embu, Kenya
  2Mathematics, Statistics, and Physical Sciences Department, Taita Taveta University, Voi, Kenya

 Full text

    Full Text - PDF

 * Corresponding Author. 

   Corresponding author's ORCID profile:  https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9342-3687

 Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2025.05.002

 Abstract

Achieving universal health coverage remains a major challenge in low- and middle-income countries such as Kenya, especially for vulnerable groups like informal workers. This study focuses on boda-boda riders, an important part of Kenya’s transport sector, who often do not have access to formal health insurance. The aim of the study was to examine how socioeconomic factors influence health insurance enrollment among boda-boda riders in Kenya, with the goal of supporting fair access to healthcare. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used, and data were collected from 370 boda-boda riders in Embu County, Kenya, using a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire gathered information on socioeconomic characteristics, insurance enrollment status, perceived affordability of health insurance, and demographic details. Logistic regression was used to assess the effect of these factors on the likelihood of enrolling in health insurance. Results showed that 62.2% of participants had health insurance. The analysis found that riders with higher income (OR = 1.000, p < 0.001), more working hours per week (OR = 1.655, p < 0.001), and older age (OR = 1.270, p < 0.001) were more likely to be enrolled. In contrast, having more dependents (OR = 0.385, p < 0.001) and more years of experience in the boda-boda business (OR = 0.118, p < 0.001) were linked to a lower chance of enrollment. Additionally, those who viewed health insurance as affordable were significantly more likely to enroll (OR = 4.529, p < 0.001) compared to those who saw it as expensive. These findings highlight that both socioeconomic status and the perceived cost of insurance are key factors affecting enrollment in health insurance among boda-boda riders in Kenya.

 © 2025 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords

 Health insurance, Socioeconomic factors, Boda-boda riders, Kenya, Insurance enrollment

 Article history

 Received 14 December 2024, Received in revised form 18 April 2025, Accepted 27 April 2025

 Acknowledgment

No Acknowledgment.

  Compliance with ethical standards

  Ethical considerations

We followed ethical guidelines throughout this study to protect participants and keep our data honest. Each participant provided informed consent and received assurance that they could stop participating at any time without consequences. The study used unique personal identifiers for each participant and put the gathered information in protected storage. Through this research, we followed the Kenya Data Protection Act 2019 to use data only for academic study. Questions were designed to avoid discomfort or harm, and efforts were made to represent diverse participants fairly through random sampling. Findings will be shared with stakeholders and participants to promote transparency and inform policy development.

  Conflict of interest: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 Citation:

 Kihara PW, Morris ZN, and Mwilu NM (2025). Modeling the socioeconomic determinants of health insurance coverage among boda-boda riders in Kenya. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 12(5): 10-17

  Permanent Link to this page

 Figures

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 Tables

  Table 1  Table 2  Table 3  Table 4  Table 5 

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