Food Insecurity and Dietary Deprivation: Migrant Households in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

The current study focuses on food consumption and dietary diversity among internal migrant households in Kenya using data from a city-wide household survey of Nairobi conducted in 2018. The paper examined whether migrant households are more likely to experience inferior diets, low dietary diversity, and increased dietary deprivation than their local counterparts. Second, it assesses whether some migrant households experience greater dietary deprivation than others. Third, it analyses whether rural-urban links play a role in boosting dietary diversity among migrant households. Length of stay in the city, the strength of rural-urban links, and food transfers do not show a significant relationship with greater dietary diversity. Better predictors of whether a household is able to escape dietary deprivation include education, employment, and household income. Food price increases also decrease dietary diversity as migrant households adjust their purchasing and consumption patterns. The analysis shows that food security and dietary diversity have a strong relationship with one another: food insecure households also experience the lowest levels of dietary diversity, and food secure households the highest.

Determinants associated with low dietary diversity among migrants to Morocco: a cross sectional study

“…In the current work, the low income of the migrant population was associated with low dietary diversity. The same finding was reported in a study from Kenya in 2018 25 . Indeed, the global economic and financial crisis, poor buying power, and rising food costs would encourage individuals to avoid purchasing particular food products 26 .…”

Ethnicity, social connectedness, and the rural-urban food continuum: Food security among urban informal settlement dwellers in Kenya

“…Some households also received food from friends and relatives in urban areas. However, in another study, Onyango et al [ 24 ] also focused on the length of stay in the city, rural-urban links, and food transfers, which did not focus on the dietary diversity of households in Nairobi. Nonetheless, the results reported by Onyango et al [ 22 ] are further supported by Merchant et al [ 23 ], who found that urban households reported lower food security outcomes than rural households because of decreased access to the food production environment resulting from COVID-19 restrictions on movement and lockdowns.…”

“…Ericksen [ 25 ] also identifies other factors, such as access to government and non-government social support services, as food production and consumption determinants. Besides the rural-urban food continuum, employment, education, household income, and food prices also determine food security outcomes [ 23 , 24 ]. These studies highlight the importance of socioeconomic variables in determining food security.…”

“…Furthermore, following Ericksen's [ 25 ] conceptualization of determinants of food security outcome included households' access to government food transfer programs and NGO support as important determinants of food security in informal settlements. The study conceptualized that socioeconomic variables such as income and investment, employment, and age of respondents are important determinants of food security [ 23 , 24 ] (Merchant et al, 2022; Onyango et al, 2003). The study uses the dependency ratio as a proxy for the economic well-being of the household as it reflects economically productive members of the household [ 29 ] (Iram & Butt, 2004).…”

“…Studies that have focused on urban food security have either relied on cross-sectional data to disentangle the problem [ 13 , 14 ] (e.g., Gallaher et al, 2013; Soma et al, 2022) or not recognized the interplay of social or cultural connectedness and role of rural-urban food systems in explaining gaps in food security outcomes among urban populations living on informal settlements [ [19] , [20] , [21] ] (e.g., Korir et al, 2022; Kimani-Murage et al, 2014; Omondi et al, 2017). Furthermore, although studies several studies in Kenya have investigated the potential role of rural-urban food continuum in enhancing food security in urban areas [ [22] , [23] , [24] ] (Onyango et al, 2021; Merchant et al, 2022; Onyango et al, 2023), they overlook region of origin of urban populations and do not employ the decomposition analysis method to explore the differential impacts of rural-urban food continuum and social connectedness on urban food systems outcomes.…”