Urbanization and Food Security: Empirical Evidence from Households in Urban Southwest Nigeria

Abstract Rapid urban growth changes the composition as well as diversification of the food consumed among urban households. Achieving food security in the midst of rapid urbanization require understanding how urban and food consumption intertwined. Thus this paper uses combined measure of food security to determine urban household food security status as influenced by extent of urbanization in Nigeria. Results show that urban effect generated through urbanicity index using principal component analysis revealed that most households were in low urban category. On the average, most urban household had diverse diet. However, combining per capita expenditure and dietary diversity index as measure of household food security revealed different level of food security status. Multinomial logit regression results reveals that gender of household head, employment status, educational status, household income, occupational status and urbanicity index significantly determine the probability of urban household being food secured at different levels of food security status. Relevant policy interventions that aim at securing sustainable food security were identified. Keywords: Food security, Dietary diversity, Food expenditure, Urbanicity index, Urban Nigeria JEL classification code: D12, R22, C25, C38, Acknowledgement