Livelihoods

Poverty has diverse manifestations, including the lack of income and productive resources required to ensure a sustainable livelihood. This area of our work aims to explore the links between childhood poverty, the strategies people use to earn their living and the assets available to them, and the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Livelihoods are not just a matter of household decision-making but a more complex array of interactions, where children are also actors who make certain strategies possible and are affected by them. This area of our work captures not only relevant household data but also seeks to understand who controls household assets and who benefits from their use.

Families living in urban or rural areas experience different pressures on their income and will employ different strategies to try to ensure a decent livelihood. In rural areas, these will consist of agricultural intensification, livelihood diversification (particularly informal work) and migration. In urban areas, families relying on informal work (non-wage income) may be more vulnerable than those with a regular, dependable source of income.

There are important distinctions to be made between accumulative, adaptive, coping, and survival strategies. Accumulative strategies increase consumption or assets in response to opportunity (the rich years) and adaptive strategies seek to spread risk (in lean years). In extreme circumstances, coping strategies may lead to survival strategies where consumption may be drastically reduced and household assets eroded.