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Background: Many households in urban areas suffer from severe food insecurity. In Ethiopia, current economic recession, pandemic, locust invasion, and conflict, disproportionately aggravated the problems. This study aims to assess food insecurity in household and its factors in the Eastern Ethiopia. Methods: A community-based, cross-sectional study was conducted to assess 616 households in urban areas of Eastern Ethiopia using simple random sampling. FANTA Indicator Guide (v.3) Questionnaires were used as data collection tool. Then, the information was entered into Epi-data version 3.02 and exported to SPSS version 21. To determine factors affecting household food insecurity, binary regression analysis was performed, and a p-value of < 0.05 at a 95% confidence interval was considered statistically significant. Model fitness was checked using the Hosmer-Lemeshow test. Results: The prevalence of household food insecurity was 41.7% (95% CI: 37.4–45.6). The following factors were determined as food insecurity predictors: household head's sex [Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR)=1.75, 95% CI: 1.08–2.84], household head's education (AOR= 0.52, 95% CI: 0.33–0.99), mother's occupation [AOR= 0.3, 95% CI: 0.19–0.57], households with the medium wealth index (AOR =1.72, 95% CI: 1.06–2.78) and households with the lowest wealth index (AOR=4.01, 95% CI: 2.35–6.86). Conclusions: The prevalence of household food insecurity in urban areas of Eastern Ethiopia is high. The food insecurity was significantly affected by residency, education, occupation, and wealth index. The government should focus on socio-economic policies targeting the vulnerable and improve their economic status. Corresponding Author:Tariku Derese View Orcid in Profile You can search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar Profile

The main target of the research was to diagnose the level and structure of consumption expenditures of rural households in Poland in 2015-2021. Among consumption expenditures, special attention was paid to fixed expenditures, i.e. on food and non-alcoholic beverages, as well as on housing and energy carriers. Expenditures of rural households were compared to expenditures of urban households and analyzed against the background of all households in Poland. The data source was individual, unidentifiable data from the “Household Budget Survey” conducted by the Central Statistical Office in 2015-2021. It was noticed that in the years 2015-2021, relatively large disproportions in the level of consumption expenditure between rural and urban households were observed. In 2015, consumption expenditures per capita in households living in rural areas accounted for less than 3/4 of expenditures of households living in urban areas. However, in the analyzed period, the increase in the level of this occurrence was more than twice as high for rural households, which proves a pronounced convergence process. The greatest burden on rural household budgets was expenditure on food and non-alcoholic beverages, which in rural households amounted to about 30%, and in 2020, i.e. the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, it exceeded 32%. It was noticed that the structure of consumption expenditures between rural and urban households were very similar in 2015 and 2021.

Dietary diversity became a global concern in improving health conditions through the habit of food group consumption by adding health dimension to the issue of food calorie consumption. Access to nutritionally adequate and good quality diet is essential to human health, productivity and work output. However, despite the various concerns by governments all over the world on ensuring that every household can at least provide three square meals per day, food insecurity continues to be a major development problem across the globe. This study assessed the effect of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on households’ dietary diversity in Jos Metropolis, Plateau State, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 265 households. Data was collected using well-structured questionnaire. The analytical techniques were; Descriptive statistics, Dietary Diversity index and Z-Statistics Test. Gender, age, household size, education, marital status, cooperative membership and access to credit were the socioeconomic characteristics described. Result indicate that 86% of the households had low food dietary diversity while 14% of the households had high food dietary diversity before and after the pandemic lockdown. Similarly, 18% of the households had low calorie consumption while 82% of the households had high dietary diversity before and after the pandemic lockdown. Cereals, legumes/grains, oils/fat, roots and tubers, sugar and honey and meats were the most common food consumed by the households daily before and after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Result further indicate that the pandemic lockdown had effect on the dietary diversity and food consumption patterns of the urban households. It can be concluded that the understanding of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on dietary diversity and food consumption patterns of households is important in developing policy measures such as social safety nets, home feeding programmes, the school feeding programme, conditional cash transfers schemes and improved marketing channels that will help mitigate against households falling into food insecurity during similar pandemic in the future.

Urbanization precipitates substantial economic transformations, with housing markets playing a pivotal role. The expansion of cities escalates housing demand, subsequently increasing housing debt, which is a crucial factor influencing household consumption. This study utilizes data from six rounds of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) spanning 2010 to 2020 to investigate the impact of housing debt on household consumption in urban China. Given the dynamics changes in housing debt status, as well as the endogeneity problems caused by reverse causality and selection bias between households’ debt decisions and consumption behavior, this study employs both the difference-in differences with multiple periods and groups (DIDM) model and the two-way fixed effects model. The results show that the average consumption expenditure of households with housing debt is 14% higher than those without. A 1% increase in housing debt size correlates with a 0.011% rise in consumption. Moreover, this positive effect is more pronounced among low-income households and those with older household heads, as well as those owning multiple properties. Compared to non-durable consumption, the impact of housing debt is more substantial on durable consumption. Further mechanism analysis reveals that the effect of housing debt on household consumption is primarily driven by an increase in housing assets, spurred by the rising housing prices. This study underscores the importance of integrating housing debt management within the framework of sustainable urban development, which not only ensures equitable access to housing but also fosters the promotion of sustainable consumption.

Research background: The food system is central to a wide range of outcomes such as food security, nutrition and economic development. In this wise, the food systems must meet the needs of a growing and increasingly urbanized population. However, food system in developing countries is undergoing a rapid transformation towards high value products and food safety. Yet, the consumer demand drive towards the transformation has received much less attention. Hence, improvement in the agricultural and food systems must be viewed in the context of household food consumption patterns. Purpose of the article: This paper examined household food demand and food choice preferences among urban households in southwest, Nigeria. Understanding Nigeria’s Agrofood structure through urban eating pattern will proffer knowledge required for better policy design and implementation. Methods: The paper applies a quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) model to a cross-sectional household survey data from two urban areas, and estimate price and expenditure elasticities as indicators of household sensitivity to market shocks. Findings & Value added: Analysis of frequency distribution on urban household’s preferences shows that convenience, availability, safety were important attributes influencing decisions to purchase foods. Demand estimations show positive expenditure elasticities for food groups with values close to unity. The animal-source foods and cereals were more expenditure-elastic in high urban areas (HUA) and low urban areas (LUA), respectively. All own-price elasticities are negative and LUA are more price-sensitive to most food groups compared to HUA. The price and expenditure results suggest that transformation of agro food products will come in place if convenience and food safety attributes are incorporated in food value chain.

The main objective of this research was determination and analysis of the fish consumption in the urban and rural areas, Markazi Province. The survey method was used to achieve the research objectives and the main instrument of the research was a researcher made questionnaire. The questionnaires were completed by visiting each of the research samples (Urban and rural households). 2525 number of them was assigned to the sample based on random sampling method. Cities were selected in the first stage by full enumeration (12 Cities: Ashtian, Arak, Tafrish, Khomein, Mohalat, Saveh, Shazand, Delijan, Kemijan, Farahan, Khandab, Zarandieh). Frequency of the sample in each city is determined in proportion of the size of urban households. In this study 1455 people were studied in the urban areas and 1070people in the rural areas. A standard formula was used to estimate the amount of fish consumption. The results showed that the average of per capita consumption in total province is 5.81 kg, in urban area 6.70 kg and in rural area 4.62 kg/y. On the other hand, inflation and lack of local shopping mall near the workplace and residence are considered as the main problems and obstacles of the consumption level. Also, the satisfaction level of the price and diversity of the available aquatic, was lower than average in the market (2.2 and 2.62from 5). Regression analysis results also showed that five variables including education level, number of household members, price, income level and knowing how to cooking fish, explained more than 57 percent of the change in the consumption of aquatics (R2=0.57). In the end it is proposed that planning for increasing the levels of information and public culture, diversifying the methods and programs of the extension service and promoting of the fish consumption, expansion of fish distribution and production centers and assistance to cooperative activities and unions in the field of aquaculture marketing and adopting supportive policies for fishing community in order to promoting their welfare and ultimately reducing the price aquatic be considered by aquatic consumption and public health planners.

This paper presented the food security situation among urban households in Nigeria. Primary data were used in this study and these were obtained with a structured questionnaire. The households were randomly selected from 7 locations with the number selected proportionate to the size of each location. The analytical tools used include tables, percentages and food security incidence. The food insecurity incidence for the study area is 0.49. Food insecurity incidence increases with increase in age of household heads. It is highest when household heads are within the range of 61 – 70 years at 0.58 and least within range 21 –30 years at 0.30. Food insecurity incidence is higher in femaleheaded households at 0.49 than in male-headed households at 0.38. Food insecurity incidence decreases with increase in level of education. Food insecurity incidence is relatively low for those engaged in professional occupation and highest for traders. Food insecurity incidence is highest at 0.48 and lowest at 0.33 for the traders and unemployed respectively. Food insecurity incidence increases with increase in household size. This ranges between 0.27 and 1.00 for those households made up of 1-4 and greater than 12 members respectively. There is a decline in food insecurity incidence as income increases from 0.41 for the low-income group to 0.20 for the high-income group. On the basis of dependence ratio, food insecurity incidence increases with increase in dependency ratio. This increases from 0.30 for households with no dependence to 0.50 for households with greater than 1 dependency ratio.