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

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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.

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Barry M. Popkin, Linda S Adair, Shu Ng (2012)

Decades ago, discussion of an impending global pandemic of obesity was thought of as heresy. But in the 1970s, diets began to shift towards increased reliance upon processed foods, increased away-from-home food intake, and increased use of edible oils and sugar-sweetened beverages. Reductions in physical activity and increases in sedentary behavior began to be seen as well. The negative effects of these changes began to be recognized in the early 1990s, primarily in low- and middle-income populations, but they did not become clearly acknowledged until diabetes, hypertension, and obesity began to dominate the globe. Now, rapid increases in the rates of obesity and overweight are widely documented, from urban and rural areas in the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to populations in countries with higher income levels. Concurrent rapid shifts in diet and activity are well documented as well. An array of large-scale programmatic and policy measures are being explored in a few countries; however, few countries are engaged in serious efforts to prevent the serious dietary challenges being faced. © 2012 International Life Sciences Institute.

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Conceptualising COVID-19’s impacts on household food security

Stephen Devereux, Christophe Béné, John Hoddinott (2020)

COVID-19 undermines food security both directly, by disrupting food systems, and indirectly, through the impacts of lockdowns on household incomes and physical access to food. COVID-19 and responses to the pandemic could undermine food production, processing and marketing, but the most concerning impacts are on the demand-side – economic and physical access to food. This paper identifies three complementary frameworks that can contribute to understanding these effects, which are expected to persist into the post-pandemic phase, after lockdowns are lifted. FAO’s ‘four pillars’– availability, access, stability and utilisation – and the ‘food systems’ approach both provide holistic frameworks for analysing food security. Sen’s ‘entitlement’ approach is useful for disaggregating demand-side effects on household production-, labour-, trade- and transfer-based entitlements to food. Drawing on the strengths of each of these frameworks can enhance the understanding of the pandemic’s impacts on food security, while also pinpointing areas for governments and other actors to intervene in the food system, to protect the food security of households left vulnerable by COVID-19 and public responses.

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Juan Chen (2011)

This study re-examines the healthy migrant phenomenon in China's internal migration process and investigates the different trajectories of place of origin on migrants' self-rated physical health and psychological distress. Data came from a household survey (N = 1474) conducted in Beijing between May and October in 2009. Multiple regression techniques were used to model the associations between self-rated physical health, psychological distress, and migration experience, controlling for sociodemographic characteristics. The healthy migrant phenomenon was observed among migrants on self-rated physical health but not on psychological distress. Different health status trajectories existed between physical health versus mental health and between rural-to-urban migrants versus urban-to-urban migrants. The study draws particular attention to the diminishing physical health advantage and the initial high level of psychological distress among urban-to-urban migrants. The initial physical health advantage indicates that it is necessary to reach out to the migrant population and provide equal access to health services in the urban area. The high level of psychological distress suggests that efforts targeting mental health promotion and mental disorder prevention among the migrant population are an urgent need. The findings of the study underline the necessity to make fundamental changes to the restrictive hukou system and the unequal distribution of resources and opportunities in urban and rural areas. These changes will lessen the pressure on big cities and improve the living conditions and opportunities of residents in townships/small cities and the countryside. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.