Journal ArticleDOI
Household strategies and rural livelihood diversification
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TLDR
In this paper, the authors reviewed the recent literature on diversification as a livelihood strategy of rural households in developing countries, with particular reference to sub-Saharan Africa, and concluded that removal of constraints to, and expansion of opportunities for, diversification are desirable policy objectives because they give individuals and households more capabilities to improve livelihood security and to raise living standards.Abstract:
This article reviews the recent literature on diversification as a livelihood strategy of rural households in developing countries, with particular reference to sub‐Saharan Africa. Livelihood diversification is defined as the process by which rural families construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in order to survive and to improve their standards of living. The determinants and effects of diversification in the areas of poverty, income distribution, farm output and gender are examined. Some policy inferences are summarised. The conclusion is reached that removal of constraints to, and expansion of opportunities for, diversification are desirable policy objectives because they give individuals and households more capabilities to improve livelihood security and to raise living standards.read more
Citations
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Capitals and Capabilities: A Framework for Analyzing Peasant Viability, Rural Livelihoods and Poverty
TL;DR: In this article, the authors develop an analytical framework for analyzing rural livelihoods in terms of their sustainability and their implications for rural poverty, arguing that the analysis of rural livelihood needs to understand people's access to five types of capital asset and the ways in which they combine and transform those assets in the building of livelihoods that as far as possible meet their material and their experiential needs.
Journal ArticleDOI
Nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural Africa: concepts, dynamics, and policy implications
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce a special issue on the topic of income diversification and livelihoods in rural Africa: Cause and Consequence of change, where the authors concentrate on core conceptual issues that bedevil the literature on rural income diversity and the policy implications of the empirical evidence presented in this special issue.
Journal ArticleDOI
Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective
Abstract: The debate on migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from developmentalist optimism in the 1950s and 1960s, to neo-Marxist pessimism over the 1970s and 1980s, towards more optimistic views in the 1990s and 2000s. This paper argues how such discursive shifts in the migration and development debate should be primarily seen as part of more general paradigm shifts in social and development theory. However, the classical opposition between pessimistic and optimistic views is challenged by empirical evidence pointing to the heterogeneity of migration impacts. By integrating and amending insights from the new economics of labor migration, livelihood perspectives in development studies and transnational perspectives in migration studies – which share several though as yet unobserved conceptual parallels – this paper elaborates the contours of a conceptual framework that simultaneously integrates agency and structure perspectives and is therefore able to account for the heterogeneous nature of migration-development interactions. The resulting perspective reveals the naivety of recent views celebrating migration as self-help development “from below”. These views are largely ideologically driven and shift the attention away from structural constraints and the vital role of states in shaping favorable conditions for positive development impacts of migration to occur.
Journal ArticleDOI
Social Vulnerability to Climate Change and Extremes in Coastal Vietnam
TL;DR: In this paper, a framework for analyzing social vulnerability is outlined, an aspect largely underemphasized in assessments of the impacts of climate change and climate extremes, which is defined as the exposure of individuals or collective groups to livelihood stress as a result of environmental change.
Journal ArticleDOI
The livelihoods approach and management of small-scale fisheries
Edward H. Allison,Frank Ellis +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, an approach to poverty reduction in low-income countries known as the sustainable livelihoods approach is applied to understand the strategies of artisanal fisherfolk confronted by fluctuating fisheries resources.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability, and Disasters.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the social, political and economic environment is as much a cause of disasters as the natural environment and that the concept of vulnerability is central to an understanding of disasters and their prevention or mitigation, exploring the extent and ways in which people gain access to resources.
Posted Content
Migration unemployment and development: a two-sector analysis.
Harris,Michael P. Todaro +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined why rural-urban labor migration persists and is even increasing in many developing nations despite the existence of positive marginal products in agriculture and significant levels of urban unemployment, and concluded that in the absence of wage flexibility an optimal policy would include both partial wage subsidies or direct government employment and measures to restrict free migration.
Book
At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability and Disasters
TL;DR: In this paper, the challenge of disasters and their approach are discussed, and a framework and theory for disaster mitigation is presented. But the authors do not address the problem of access to resources and coping in adversarial situations.
Posted Content
A model of labor migration and urban unemployment in less developed countries.
TL;DR: In this paper, an economic behavioral model of rural urban migration is formulated which represents a realistic modification and extension of the simple wage differential approach commonly found in the literature and this probablistic approach is incorporated into a rigorous model of the determinants of urban labor demand and supply which when given values for the crucial parameters can be used among other things to estimate the equilibrium proportion of the urban labor force that is not absorbed by the modern industrial economy.
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Whose Reality Counts?: Putting the First Last
TL;DR: In this article, the challenge to change and the transfer of reality are discussed in the context of the PRA's Glossary of Meanings (GLM) and PRA.