Food Security and a Child’s Diet Quality Across Households in Rural and Urban Nigeria

The substantial number of food-insecure households in Nigeria and the problem of regional and socioeconomic disparities in food security are raising issues of food system transformation and justice. While knowledge of the gap is of public interest, the empirical validation of the gap is scant and the components of the gap linked to differences in socioeconomic characteristics and income inequality have not been investigated for Nigeria. This paper investigated the socioeconomic disparity in food security and a child’s diet quality. The specific objectives were (1) to profile the socioeconomic inequalities in food security and a child’s diet quality, and (2) to determine the relationship between food insecurity and a child’s dietary quality. The study employed Round 6 of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS6) data for Nigeria. A model was specified using a two-stage least-squares (2SLS) regression and analyzed using Stata MP Version 14. Results revealed 80.53% of households were food insecure, with a more pronounced estimate for the rural sector (81.95%) compared to the urban sector (78.08%). This was found to be statistically significant. As wealth ranking of households increased from poorest to richest, the proportion of households in food insecurity declined for the rural sample and for the pooled. The regression result showed that food insecurity decreased the likelihood of children having a quality diet and was statistically significant for rural areas and for the pooled sample (National). Thus, promoting programmes that enhance food access, availability, and utilization, targeted at the rural and urban poor, as well as diverse diets for children, are paramount