Impacts of Caregivers’ Nutrition Knowledge and Food Market Accessibility on Preschool Children’s Dietary Diversity in Remote Communities in Southeast Nigeria

Abstract

Empirical evidence is scanty on the nexus between caregivers’ nutrition knowledge, market accessibility, and preschool children’s dietary diversity in remote communities of Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria. To fill this gap, this study evaluated the effects of caregivers’ nutrition knowledge and access to food market on dietary diversity of preschool children. We used cross-sectional data from four hundred households selected from twenty remote communities in Southeast Nigeria. The study adopted instrumental variable regression to estimate the impacts of nutrition knowledge and food market access on preschool children’s dietary diversity. The findings show that in remote communities, caregivers’ nutrition knowledge and households’ closeness to the market improved preschool children’s dietary diversity. The study demonstrates the potential of improving preschool children’s nutrition outcomes through enhancing access to food market and the nutrition knowledge of the caregivers.