Livelihoods checklist
1. Collect relevant secondary data
This might include a selection of the following:
Agro-ecological zone (may not be relevant for urban and peri-urban areas)
- rainfall (average amounts, localised spatial, annual and seasonal variability)
- temperature (seasonal variation, averages)
- local geomorphology (including depth of water table, presence of acquifers, soil type)
- forest cover
- climax vegetation type
Contextual information
- significant political, historical and cultural background
Infrastructure
- How well connected is the area by road/ rail/ waterways?
- Does the area have a good, reliable and affordable power network? What proportion of enterprises and households are connected?
- Does the area have a good, reliable and affordable telecommunications network?
- What proportion of households have adequate water and sanitation services? Are they publicly or privately provided?
- Other
Social services
- What are the enrolment and retention rates for girl and boy children in the area?
- What are the literacy rates?
- What are the mortality and morbidity rates?
- What are the key health risks in the area?
- What services are available, and what do people use (differentiate by gender and wealth/ ethnic/ welfare group)?
- Who provides the health and education services and how are they paid for?
Venn Diagram of important projects / programmes/ interventions
- national and local government projects / programmes/ interventions
- CBO, NNGO, SNGO and donor involvement projects / programmes/ interventions
Market information
- Describe the functioning of markets for major agricultural inputs (including land and labour) and outputs.
- Undertake a similar exercise for any other significant local industries/ enterprises/ livelihood activities.
- Are markets well integrated?
- Do markets conform to neo-classical expectations? If not, identify the main causes of market failure. (e.g. Do markets suffer from monopsony and monopoly? Is there differential access to markets? Who has access, who does not?
Main economic activities
- List of main activities (by importance in generating food security, protecting households from vulnerability, generating employment, income, export from district or region?)
- Sub-sectoral analysis – identify up and down-stream activities
Livelihood activities and coping strategies
- (overlapping with the above, but also including all non-monetised livelihood activities and coping strategies)
Socio-economic information
- What are the important determinants of poverty in the area?
- Have participatory poverty assessments been conducted in the area? If so, what useful information do these provide? Does your research team need to conduct local wealth ranking and other participatory exercises, in order to understand the nature and understanding of poverty in the local communities?
- What proportion of the population are below the poverty line? Is this information available for chronic poverty, ultra-poverty/ absolute poverty? Is the information disaggregated by gender, gender of household head, ethnic or linguistic group, livelihood activity or other dimensions?
Possible sources:
- (Government) Central Statistical Office reports (Household Survey Reports)
- Local government statistics – held at the municipal and district level (e.g. reports held by local agricultural extension officers)
- Participatory Poverty Assessments
- World Bank Reports, held or produced by the country office
- Bilateral donor reports
- Grey cover reports held by NNGOs and SNGOs, local universities, in-country research and consultancy teams etc.
2. Collect basic primary data
Some of the information above will not be available in secondary sources. The research team will need to identify key informants to provide them with the information, through structured or semi-structured interviews. This can then be followed up by deepening an understanding of the context of local livelihoods by use of participatory methods, including focus group discussions. This should provide the researchers with sufficient information to identify the main livelihood activities. They will then be able to proceed to the next stage of data collection.
Collect livelihood data
The researchers will need to decide which approach they wish to take. They may decide to purposively select households based on their level of poverty (wealth/ wellbeing rank or income decile?) and their main livelihood activity (importance in protecting food security, income, allocation of labour time, allocation of land or other capitals to production?). This will allow the research team to develop a number of in-depth case studies. This can be triangulated with findings from community level participatory exercises and sample surveys.
A possible approach to in-depth case studies:
- Select household using a mixture of wealth rank and livelihood
- Interview household members at their home/ enterprise (increases researcher’s understanding of the household)
- Interview more than one household member, if possible (to increase understanding of intra-household dynamics and access to and control of resources)
- Interview on more than one occasion, if possible. (allows cross-checking, probing and follow-up)
- Use a semi-structured interview approach to build up an understanding of:
- the size and structure of the household (including migrants in and out, servants, adopted children, joint household structures etc.)
- intra-household allocation of tasks and responsibilities
- inter and intra-household borrowing/ lending/ giving
- traditional and non-traditional safety nets
- role of remittances
- endogenous and exogenous risks
- shocks
- trends
- household responses to shocks and trends – coping and adaptation
- main household assets, (inventory of human, natural, social, physical, financial capital, plus political capital, if desired) (owned, held in common, available through reciprocal arrangements etc.)
- calls on household assets
- differentiated list of livelihood activities – differentiated by gender, relationship to household head, age, seasonal, occasional, regular, constant. Differentiated by level of returns. Which activity is main income earner, most significant for food security? Which are coping strategy activities, ‘accumulation activities’ (those aimed at enrichment)? Which are natural resource based/ non-NR based? Which are reliant on common properties? Which are dependent on relationships with others? Which are reliant on markets? Are any illegal or frowned on?
- What are the key constraints for these livelihood activities? (including barriers to entry, like level of capitalisation needed, required skill level, high social and political capital necessary)
- What are the key risks/ problems/ constraints faced in each of these activities?
- Which have drudgery associated with them?
- (Ask the respondent) What are the livelihood activities of the poorest in the community? Why do they do these activities? What are the livelihood activities of the richest? Have these activities made them rich? If not, how did they accumulate wealth? What are the main barriers to entry for these activities?
The case study can be written up using the Livelihoods Framework as an organising principle, but might also include other issues, such as: intra-household differentiation, livelihood constraints, vulnerability to shocks, coping, and capabilities to escape poverty. The findings can be cross-checked with participatory and survey findings for representativeness.