Supermarket purchase and child nutritional outcomes in urban Kenya

Empirical studies that examine the implication of supermarket purchase on child nutritional outcomes are scarce. This article investigates the link between supermarket shopping and height-for-age Z-scores (HAZ) and weight-for-age Z-scores (WAZ) of children and adolescents under the age of 18 years. We use two rounds of survey data (2012 and 2015) from urban Kenya in a series of instrumental variable panel data models. Findings reveal that buying from supermarkets and spending higher shares of income in supermarkets significantly increases child HAZ and decreases the probability of being stunted. Supermarket purchase also positively affects WAZ of children but to a lower extent compared to HAZ outcomes. By examining the dietary differences between supermarket shoppers and non-shoppers, we find that supermarket shoppers have a higher dietary diversity compared to those buying from traditional markets only. Findings have relevance for policies that need to take advantage of the rapid transformation of the retail sector in developing countries for better health outcomes. Acknowledgement : We thank enumerators and field supervisors for their effort in data collection. We also acknoledge respondents for devoting their time to answer our questions. Funding was provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG).