Urban Household Food Security: An Assessment of the Correlates of Micronutrient-Sensitive Dietary Diversity

Increasing urbanization rate being experienced around the world and in South Africa has implications for the pursuit of development goals of reducing poverty and food insecurity. This is so because it sets up a new challenge in the fight against poverty, and food and nutrition insecurity from the conventional rural perspective to a dynamic urban one. Thus, this study accesses the dynamics of food and nutrition security with a focus on micronutrient-sensitive diets and the driving force among urban households in South Africa. Consequently, the data used to achieve the aim of this study were obtained from the 2018 General Household Survey (GHS) collected by Statistics South Africa. Micronutrient-Sensitive Dietary Diversity Score (MsDDS), descriptive analysis, chi-square test and Poisson regression models were employed to analyze the data. It is shown from the analyses that Group 4 (Vegetables) and Group 6 (Fruit) were consumed by a lower proportion of urban households in the 24-hour recall period. Likewise, food Group 4 and Group 6 were least consumed by households having low household dietary diversity score and medium household dietary diversity score. The result further shows that there is a significant difference between the count of micronutrient-sensitive dietary diversity food consumed and provincial location of the examined urban households. However, the respective average of the number of micronutrient-sensitive food consumed for WC (3.38), NC (2.95), FS (2.96) and NW (2.98) provinces are below the national mean of 3.44. The Poisson regression analysis shows that household head demographic characteristics (age, gender, marital status), educational attainment of the head (no education, primary education, certificate and diploma, higher education), employment sector of head, transfers, household size, province (EC, NC, FS, KZN and NW), house ownership status (rent free) significantly influence access to diverse micronutrient-sensitive diets. Based on these findings, there is a need for the South African government to intensify drives that promotes the health advantages of consuming fruits and vegetables. Supports and programmes that can boost peri-urban and rural vegetable farmers' capabilities to supply surplus vegetable products to urban dwellers should be initiated, this is a win-win initiative that will aid urban dwellers easy physical access to vegetable products while peri-urban and rural vegetable farmers maximize their income. The insufficiency of transfers warrants development of program that will aid the livelihood of urban households that largely depend on transfers. Expanding access to education to all members of household besides the head should be encouraged.