Assessing Socioeconomic Predictors of Nutritional Quality in Urban Households: A Case Study of Faisalabad, Punjab
Socioeconomic Determinants of Nutritional Quality in Urban Faisalabad
Keywords:
: Socioeconomic determinants, healthy diet, dietary diversity, household health, income, education, regression analysis, nutritional health, Faisalabad, Pakistan.Abstract
This study examines the socioeconomic determinants of healthy eating habits and their implications for household health outcomes in Faisalabad, Pakistan. The primary objective is to assess how household structure, employment status, education, income levels, and access to food shape dietary patterns across different socioeconomic groups. In Faisalabad, pronounced income disparities limit the ability of low-income households to access nutritious food, often resulting in poor dietary choices and a higher prevalence of diet-related diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular conditions.
Using primary data collected from households representing diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, the study explores dietary practices, levels of nutritional awareness, and food-related constraints faced by different demographic groups. Regression analysis reveals that socioeconomic factors play a significant role in shaping dietary diversity. In the first model, the Dietary Diversity Score (DDS) was used as the dependent variable (R² = 0.208; p < 0.001). Education, income, marital status, and home ownership were positively associated with DDS, while household size showed a negative relationship, indicating resource dilution in larger families. These findings suggest that households with greater economic stability and higher educational attainment tend to consume more diverse diets.
In the second model, Body Mass Index (BMI) served as the dependent variable (R² = 0.029; p = 0.016). DDS emerged as a positive but weak predictor of BMI, with a one-unit increase in dietary diversity associated with a 0.33-unit rise in BMI. Overall, the results indicate that while socioeconomic status strongly influences diet quality, dietary diversity alone has a limited effect on BMI, highlighting the importance of other factors such as lifestyle, physical activity, and genetic predispositions in determining household health outcomes.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All articles published in AgriPaT are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
