Measuring Community Urbanicity and Its Influence on Household Food Security Across Nepal's Agroecological Zones
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View abstract on PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.A new community urbanicity scale in Nepal reveals that increased urbanicity is linked to reduced household food insecurity. Agricultural occupation did not significantly alter this relationship, highlighting the need for nuanced urbanicity measures in food security research.
Area Of Science
- Food security and nutrition
- Urbanization and development studies
- Agricultural economics
Background
- Urbanization significantly impacts food systems and security, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
- Existing "urban vs. rural" classifications are often binary and unstandardized, limiting research.
- Nuanced understanding of urbanization's effect on food security is crucial for policy development.
Purpose Of The Study
- To develop a novel community urbanicity scale for Nepal.
- To assess the association between community urbanicity and household food security.
- To explore the modifying role of agricultural occupation across Nepal's agroecological zones.
Main Methods
- A multistaged survey of 4285 households with young children across 63 communities in Nepal.
- Development of a community urbanicity scale using factor analysis across 8 domains.
- Multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression to analyze urbanicity-food security associations and effect modification by agricultural occupation.
Main Results
- Community urbanicity scores varied, with most agricultural households in mountainous and hilly regions reporting food insecurity.
- Higher community urbanicity was significantly associated with lower odds of household food insecurity (OR: 0.82; CI: 0.71, 0.94).
- Agricultural occupation showed a potential positive influence on the urbanicity-food security relationship, though not statistically significant (P=0.07).
Conclusions
- The developed urbanicity scale provides nuanced insights across Nepal's agroecological zones.
- Urbanicity and food security relationships were similar across zones, suggesting scale applicability.
- Precise urbanicity measurement is recommended for accurate food insecurity assessments, especially in agricultural populations.
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