SOAN Colloquium

Guest Speaker: Dr. Sangeetha Madhavan from the University of Maryland

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM EDT
Johnson Center, #327

We are pleased to invite you to the second talk of the 2018-2019 SOAN Colloquium Series. Dr. Sangeetha Madhavan--a sociologist and anthropological demographer--in the University of Maryland's Department of African-American Studies and Department of Sociology will be giving a talk titled "Rural-Urban Connectivity and Household Food Security: A Longitudinal Study of Informal Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya". This is part of Dr. Madhavan's innovative, ongoing, NIH-funded research measuring kin connectivity and support networks in Kenya. 

Dr. Madhavan's talk will take place on Wednesday, October 24 from 10am-11am in the Johnson Center 327 - Meeting Room C. Following the talk, we will have an informal discussion with Dr. Madhavan over tea, coffee, and snacks. We strongly encourage you and your graduate students to attend and offer critiques of Dr. Madhavan's work.

ABSTRACT

With rapid urbanization and the growth of informal settlements in Africa, there is increasing concern about food security in low-income urban environments. Economic precarity coupled with lack of access to means of food production increase the risk of food insecurity for residents of informal settlements, raising critical questions about the sustainability of urban living, especially for the most vulnerable urban poor. However, connection to a rural “home” may buffer against food insecurity but data limitations have made it difficult to investigate the relationship. We draw on 10 years of data from two slum communities in the Nairobi Health and Demographic Surveillance System to 1) describe the trajectories of urban-rural connectivity using access to livestock or crops and movement to/from rural areas and 2) analyze the relationship between connectivity and food insecurity in the whole sample and stratified by slum community and sex of household head. Our results suggest variation in food insecurity over time peaking around 2008 and an overall downward trend in access to livestock/crops and movement to rural areas. We find evidence for a mitigating effect of urban-rural connectivity on food insecurity but the effects are different in the two slum communities and vary across sex of household head.