Exploration of Dietary Diversity Heterogeneity across Rural-Urban Areas in Pakistan: Based on HIES 2018-19

Abstract

This study investigates the gap in dietary diversity and thereby quantifies this gap into its main drivers between rural and urban households. The statistical analysis based on data from the Household Integrated Expenditures Survey 2018-19 for Pakistan shows that there is a significant mean difference in household dietary diversity across rural-urban regions. To quantify the dietary diversity gap across regions, the multivariate nonlinear Oaxaca-Blinder mean decomposition method is used and we have decomposed Oaxaca-Blinder mean decomposition into the explained effect and the unexplained effect. The result of the nonlinear Oaxaca-Blinder mean decomposition method explains that the dietary diversity gap across regions is specifically due to households’ characteristics like household expenditures, household head educational attainment and age etc. The mean difference ranges from 89.66% to 75.32% for dietary diversity scores and food variety scores, respectively. The household expenditures and income quintiles are major drivers of the dietary diversity gap besides other socio-demographic characteristics such as household size, marital status, educational attainment, and food security status of households across rural-urban regions. The unexplained coefficient effect (unexplained effect) is due to unobservable factors such as the role of region-specific institutions and found significant only in the case of food variety scores.