ABSTRACT
Nigeria’s urban population has expanded rapidly over the past 50 years and it is expected to grow relatively fast in the coming decades. In theory, urbanization may improve the well-being of households, thereby also increasing the quality and quantity of diets. Complementarily, livestock production among urban households can be a means of livelihood diversification, an investment opportunity and a source of animal protein. The consumption of high-quality protein food products is especially important for growth among children. Hence, this chapter investigates the implications of urbanization and livestock ownership for food security and child nutritional outcomes using various livestock typologies and satellite-based data as a proxy for livestock ownership and urbanization, respectively, in Nigeria. We used both wave 2 and wave 3 of the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMA) data, and the satellite-based night-time light intensity data from the Operational Linescan System (OLS) sensors of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) of the United States Air Force. We combined a household’s total livestock unit (TLU) with the total number of animals owned for one to five livestock ownership typologies. We used panel regression to examine the association between urbanization, livestock typologies and four food nutrition–related outcomes of interest. Our findings can be subdivided into three main categories. Firstly, we found that livestock ownership is positively associated with food security through per capita food expenditure and dietary diversity of the households, but it has a weak association with child nutritional outcomes. Secondly, urbanization has a strong positive association with per capita food expenditure and dietary diversity but it was also found to be reducing stunting and increasing height-for-age z-scores (HAZ). Thirdly, the combined results show a stronger effect on all outcomes of interest rather than a sole relationship. This suggests that livestock ownership and urbanization are complementary development drivers rather than substitutes. Therefore, rapid urbanization without asset ownership such as livestock might not directly translate into food and nutrition security.
