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  • Publication | 2025
New Directions in South-South Migration
Global Food and Nutrition Security

This chapter focuses on food consumption and dietary diversity among internal migrant households in Kenya using data from a city-wide household survey of Nairobi conducted in 2018. The study examined whether migrant households are more likely to experience inferior diets, low dietary diversity and increased dietary deprivation than their local counterparts. Second, it assesses whether some migrant households experience greater dietary deprivation than others. Third, it analyses whether rural–urban links play a role in boosting dietary diversity among migrant households. Length of stay in the city, the strength of rural–urban links and food transfers do not show a significant relationship with greater dietary diversity. Better predictors of whether a household is able to escape dietary deprivation include education, employment and household income. Food price increases also decrease dietary diversity as migrant households adjust their purchasing and consumption patterns. The analysis shows that food security and dietary diversity have a strong relationship with one another: food insecure households also experience the lowest levels of dietary diversity, and food secure households the highest.