Eating right and food accessibility: education level, market accessibility, and dietary diversity among rural households in China

Introduction Over the past half-century, China's rural residents have gradually resolved inadequate dietary energy intake, yet still face coexisting undernutrition and overnutrition due to insufficient dietary diversity. Education can effectively enhance nutritional awareness, boost rural household income, and thereby improve household and individual dietary diversity. Methods Using data from 10,958 rural households in the 2010 and 2014 waves of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this paper examines the association between education and dietary diversity by adopting an analytical framework integrating fixed-effects model, heterogeneity analysis, and mediation effect analysis. Results Fixed-effects model results show that each additional year of household heads' education is associated with an improvement in household and individual dietary diversity scores by 0.064 and 0.054 units, respectively. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that education's promotive effect on dietary diversity varies by market accessibility: it is stronger when market accessibility is lower, especially significant for female-headed households while insignificant for male-headed ones. When market accessibility is higher, education's marginal effect diminishes, yet its nutritional knowledge and income effects still significantly enhance dietary diversity. Discussion These findings highlight the critical role of household heads' education in enhancing dietary diversity among rural households, and further emphasize the need for targeted strategies based on regional differences in market accessibility to improve rural dietary quality.