Livelihood Analysis: A Checklist

The household is the basic economic decisionmaking unit in rural society. It is essential to understand householders livelihood strategies in order to make sense of what they are doing and understand how they perceive opportunities for change. Here is a checklist to help you with livelihood thinking.

The Socio-economic Research Unit of NAFRI has been developing its capacity to conduct research in support of rural development.

a) What are the householders livelihood objectives? What do they actually hope to accomplish? For example, some households might want to produce all their own food, whilst other might prefer to grow cash crops and buy their own food. What problems do they have in meeting these objectives? b) What you are proposing - does it help them reach to their own objectives? Are their objectives and yours the same or different? Would they be willing to consider other ways of achieving their objectives, for instance by adopting new technology? Would other objectives also be acceptable to them, such as cash crop surplus rather than subsistence sufficiency? What problems would they encounter in pursuing the new objectives?

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Resources
a) What resources (land, labour, capital, etc) does the household have? What resources do they need to make a decent living? Do they have enough? What problems do they have concerning access to resources? b) What you are proposing - is it reasonable when considering existing constraints on resources? How will it affect their access to resources? Will it help them solve their livelihood problems or will it create more problems for them? How could these new problems be solved?

Definitions A household is a group of people who live and eat together and typically engage in joint economic activity. This group is usually based on kinship and in Laos is normally comprised of the nuclear or stem family.

Nuclear family is father, mother and children.

In Laos, stem family = nuclear family + surviving members of the grandparental generation. Other household groupings are rare. While there are many definitions and complex systems developed to explain the concept of livelihoods, livelihoods can

Technology
a) What indigenous technologies do they have? What new technologies have they adopted? What can be done to improve the existing technology? What new technologies are they already experimenting with?

b) What you are proposing - do they have the technology needed to do it? Would they be interested in trying it? What kinds of training and other support would be needed for them to be able to adopt it?

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Knowledge & Values

a) What indigenous knowledge do they have? What traditional values and beliefs are associated with this knowledge? What opportunities and limitations does this imply? b) What you are proposing -- does it make use of their traditional knowledge? Does it challenge their values? How can your ideas be adapted to fit their knowledge system and values? Are they interested in acquiring new knowledge through training, study tours, etc?

existing problems? Would they be interested in other strategies for achieving their objectives (other technologies, new land entitlements, new market opportunities, etc.)? b) What you are proposing - how does it relate to their existing strategy? Is there a way to integrate the old with the new so that the new does not seem completely unfamiliar? How can you build on their existing strategies? How could the existing strategies be adapted to take advantage of new opportunities?

Livelihood Strategy
A livelihoods strategy is a combination of all of the above. Some questions to ask include: a) What is their existing livelihood strategy? What problems do they have in pursuing this strategy? What is their strategy for solving

Rapid livelihood system diagnosis

A good way of understanding the inner workings of the livelihood system is to analyse how households organise the means of prod-uction at their disposal in order to meet the basic needs of the household economy. The table

Household livelihood system - diagnostic results

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below, from data gathered in northern Laos, shows the main elements of this approach. The basic needs of the households are supplied by the basic needs supply systems," each of which is composed of a number of production subsystems. The basic needs are universal, but the exact manner in which they are supplied varies from area to area and from household to household. The system is diagnosed by: 1. 2. Establishing the household's objective for each supply system. Determining how (means and strategies) and how well (performance) these objectives are being met.

3.

4.

5.

If there is a problem with particular supply systems (shown in bold below), the relevant production subsystems are diagnosed to identify the causes of the problems. The causes of the problems then become focal points for experimenting with solutions. If solutions for specific problems within the existing livelihood strategy are difficult to achieve, the household may need to consider alternative means of meeting their objectives.

Author: John Raintree, johnraintree@yahoo.com

Improving Livelihoods in the Uplands of the Lao PDR was produced in 2005 by NAFRI, NAFES and NUOL.

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