Defining and interpreting food security, and measuring it in reliable, valid and cost-effective ways, have proven to be stubborn problems facing researchers and programs intended to monitor food security risks. This paper briefly reviews the conceptual and methodological literature on food...

This review of recent literature explores the urban face of food and nutrition security in a more comprehensive, integrated way than most previous efforts. The review is organized around a conceptual framework that identifies food insecurity, inadequate caring behaviors, and poor health as the...

Previous research has suggested that urban agriculture has a positive impact on the household food security and nutritional status of low-socioeconomic status groups in cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, but a formal test of the link between semisubsistence urban food production and nutritional...

Qualitative and quantitative methods in social science research have long been separate spheres with little overlap. However, recent innovations have highlighted the complementarity of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The Accra Food and Nutrition Security Study was designed to...

This study uses data from a representative survey of households with preschoolers in Accra, Ghana to (1) examine the importance of care practices for children's height-for-age z-scores (HAZ); and (2) identify subgroups of children for whom good maternal care practices may be particularly...

Life in urban areas presents special challenges for maternal child care practices. Data from a representative survey of households with children less than 3 years of age in Accra were used to test a number of hypothesized constraints to child care, including various maternal (education,...

Although most developing country cities are characterized by pockets of substandard housing and inadequate service provision, it is not known to what degree low incomes and malnutrition are confined to specific neighborhoods. This analysis uses representative household surveys of Abidjan and...

Data collected from a 1997 household survey carried out in Accra, Ghana, are used to look at the crucial role that women play as income earners and in securing access to food in urban areas. The high number of female-headed households and the large percent of working women in the sample provide...

Sub-Saharan African cities in the late 1990s face a daunting set of problems including rapid growth, increasing poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, and inadequate capacity for service provision. However, even as a renewed debate is shaping up around issues of urban development, there is...