Participation in County Budget Making Process and Economic Well-Being Among the In Youth in West Pokot County, Kenya.

Abstract

Public participation has gained prominence in modern days due to the belief that it contributes to accountability and enhanced service delivery. Many countries around the world have enacted public participation laws which have mandated the governments to prioritize public participation. Kenya, like other countries around the world has made public participation mandatory during budget making process. The Constitution of Kenya 2010, the county Government Act 2012, Public Finance Management Act 2012 and Public Participation Act 2016 all explain how public participation should be conducted. However, the participation of youth in public participation forums has been poor. Several factors have been identified to contribute towards poor youth participation in budget making process. This study sought to investigate participation in budget making process and well being of youths in West Pokot county, Kenya. The study focused on determining the effect of access to information on well being of youths in West Pokot county to find out the effect of youth’s knowledge and skills on well being of youths in West Pokot county, to explore the influence of youth attitude on well being of youths in West Pokot county, Kenya, to assess the effect of process location on well being of youths in West Pokot county, Kenya. The study targeted the youth aged between the ages of 18-35 in the four constituencies in West Pokot County namely: Kacheliba, Pokot South, Kapenguria and Sigor constituency. The target population for this study were youth and the county government officials particularly from the department of youth and finance especially those in charge of public participation during budget making process. Descriptive research design was used and purposive sampling adopted to obtain the sample size. The study test was conducted in West Pokot County involving 120 respondents. Out of the 120 questionnaires distributed 94 were returned for analysis. The study concluded that there is a significant relationship between access to information regarding budget making process and economic wellbeing of the youths and that there is inccrease of up to 0.307 units in youth economic wellbeing for each unit of increase in access to information information. The study further concluded that the youth’s knowledge and skills has a significant effect on youth economic wellbeing based on β2 = 0.073 (p-value = 0.061 which is greater than α = 0.05). Subsequently, the study results showed that youth’s attitude had significant estimation coefficients based on β3 = 0.674 (p-value = 0.000 which is less than α = 0.05), implying that we accept the hypothesis that a significant relationship exists between the youth’sattitude and youth economic wellbeing. Finally, study concluded that there is a significant relationship between process location and youth economic wellbeing. This was supported by the findings, as process location had a positive and significant effect youth economic wellbeing at β4 = 0.327 (p-value = 0.000 which is less than α = 0.05). Based on the results, the study recommended the following: County Government in collaboration with the other stakeholders should consider creating awareness among the youth on importance of participating in public participation events. The study also recommended that the county government should find a way in which the views of the less educated can be addressed because they also have some concerns that the county government must address. Another research can be conducted to broaden the scope of the study to other counties to find out whether youth’s perception, information availability and citizen’s perception determine youth participation in budget making process.