Urbanisation and the rural urban dietary diversity divide across districts in India

Food security depends on sustained access to nutritious and diverse diets during rapid structural transformation. Dietary diversity is widely used as an indicator of the utilization and quality dimensions of food security. This study examines how urbanisation shapes household food security through its effects on dietary diversity across rural and urban areas in India. Using district-level panel data from 2014 to 2020, we analyse rural–urban differences in dietary diversity and assess how economic, physical, and demographic dimensions of urbanisation influence dietary diversity over time. Urbanisation is measured using night-time lights, physical built-up area, and the share of urban population, while household dietary diversity is constructed from consumption expenditure data using Simpson’s Diversity Index. The results reveal significant and persistent rural–urban disparities in dietary diversity, indicating unequal access to diverse and nutritious diets. In the short run, urbanisation is associated with improvements in dietary diversity in both rural and urban households. However, in the long run, higher levels of urbanisation are linked to declining dietary diversity among urban households, pointing to emerging risks to diet quality and nutritional stability. Urbanisation initially widens rural–urban gaps in dietary diversity, but these gaps narrow over time. These findings highlight the non-linear and dynamic relationship between urbanisation and the nutritional dimension of food security in India. They underscore the need to view urbanisation not only as a driver of economic growth but also as a process that reshapes food environments and the stability of access to nutritious diets.