The Association Between Urbanisation and Household Food Security in Nigeria

A growing number of studies have shown that urbanisation is commonly associated with a change in dietary or consumption patterns towards more expensive and exotic foods. Previous attempts to investigate the implications of urbanisation on household food security have commonly employed dichotomous or binary indicators of urbanisation. Unlike previous studies, we employ satellite-based night-time light intensity data from the US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellites Programme and use it as a proxy for different stages or degrees of urbanisation. The night-time light data provide a continuous, spatially explicit, and objective proxy for urbanisation. The data are measured with consistent quality across countries, regardless of the different institutional capacities, allowing for consistent measurement of urban growth across various communities and regions. In our analysis, we explore the impact of variations in nightlight intensity on household food security in Nigeria. Our results show that night-time light is positively associated with household food security. However, we find that higher polynomial terms of night-time light intensity exhibit a nonlinear relationship between urbanisation and household food security. Based on the results, our findings will advance the current understanding of the relationship between urbanisation and household food security, which could have implications on maternal and child wellbeing.