Livelihood Policies Research Articles

Progression of Employment and Livelihoods Policies and Regulations for the Protracted Displacement of Refugees in Host Countries: Syrian Refugees in Jordan as a Case Study

Objectives: Three major research questions have been raised in this study to explain issues related to the employment and livelihood for Syrian refugees in Jordan and their experience to the existing employment and livelihood policies and regulations. Methods: To do so, the quantitative survey has been conducted with 390 respondents and qualitative interviews with 5 respondents to derive an outcome of the study. Results: The study concluded that the livelihood and employment of Syrian refugees in Jordan is a difficult problem that involves several different aspects. Conclusions: To address these difficulties, there will need to be a concerted and ongoing effort by the Jordanian government, as well as from international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and players from the private sector.

How housing burden damages residents' health: evidence from Chinese cities.

Currently, China is steadily pursuing high-quality development and promoting common prosperity, for which residents' health is a precondition. However, high housing-price-to-income ratios and rent-to-income ratios have already triggered many social problems and have substantially affected people's work and life. It is of practical significance to examine the relationship between housing burden and residents' health. Combining city-level housing price-to-income ratio data and residents' health data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study employs a binary logit model to investigate the impact and mechanism of housing burden on residents' physical and psychological health. Overall, a 1% increase in the housing-price-to-income ratio leads to a 1.2% decrease in physical health and a 1.9% decrease in psychological health. In terms of different psychological state indicators, a 1% increase in the housing price-to-income ratio leads to a 1.1% increase in depression, 1.1% increase in nervousness, 1.4% increase in relentlessness, 1.4% increase in hopelessness, 1.0% increase in a sense of incapability, and 1.4% increase in meaninglessness. According to mechanistic analyses, a 1% increase in the housing-price-to-income ratio leads to increases of 0.6 and 0.7% in the smoking rate and late sleep rate, respectively, while it leads to a 0.9% decrease in the noon nap rate. A growing housing burden significantly negatively impacts both the physical and psychological health of residents and increases the possibility of negative emotions. Further investigation revealed that the housing burden damages residents' health by increasing their likelihood of smoking and sleeping late and decreasing their likelihood of taking a nap at noon, while exercise alleviates the negative impacts of the housing burden on residents' physical and psychological health. Finally, we also find that housing burdens' impacts on physical and psychological health differ significantly in terms of gender, age, and educational attainment. From the perspective of improving livelihoods, governments should consider the relationship between housing burdens and residents' health when formulating livelihood policies. Location-specific and targeted policies should be followed. Additionally, efforts should be made to promote exercise among citizens.

The Impact of Relocation Policy on the Quality of Life of Residents in the Yellow River Beach Area

Background and Aim: The Relocation Plan for Residents of the Yellow River Beach Area in Shandong Province has yielded positive outcomes, but the relocation process also entails significant changes in agricultural production methods, adjustments in family economic structures, reconstruction of rural political power relations, conflicts, and integration of cultural values, as well as disintegration and reconstruction of social relations. These issues can potentially impact the quality of life of the residents. Materials and Methods: This qualitative research investigates the issues arising from the relocation policy, assesses the effects of the policy, and provides recommendations on enhancing the living standards of residents in the Yellow River beach area. This research involved conducting on-site interviews with 10 villagers and 5 members of a village committee from a village in Caiyuanji Township and a relevant literature review. Results: It was found that the relocation policy for the Yellow River beach area is a positive livelihood policy, as villagers have relocated from dilapidated cottages to modern new communities. However, there remain some challenges, including the high cost of living for farmers, issues related to the division of rights among rural village committees, and conflicts in farmers' values. Conclusion: Thus, this paper offers personal recommendations for the Yellow River Mudflat Relocation Project, including increasing investment in supporting industries for agriculture, promoting correct values among villagers, targeting poverty alleviation efforts, and adjusting the power structure of village committees.

Addressing tobacco industry influence in tobacco-growing countries.

Protecting policy-making from tobacco industry influence is central to effective tobacco control governance. The inclusion of industry actors as stakeholders in policy processes remains a crucial avenue to corporate influence. This influence is reinforced by the idea that the tobacco industry is a legitimate partner to government in regulatory governance. Addressing the influence of the tobacco industry demands a focus on the government institutions that formalize relationships between industry and policy-makers. Industry involvement in government institutions is particularly relevant in tobacco-growing countries, where sectors of government actively support tobacco as an economic commodity. In this paper, we discuss how controlling tobacco industry influence requires unique consideration in tobacco-growing countries. In these countries, there is a diverse array of companies that support tobacco production, including suppliers of seeds, equipment and chemicals, as well as transportation, leaf buying and processing, and manufacturing companies. The range of companies that operate in these contexts is particular and so is their engagement within political institutions. For governments wanting to support alternatives to tobacco growing (Article 17 of the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control), we illustrate how implementing Article 5.3, aimed at protecting tobacco control policies from tobacco industry interference, is fundamental in these countries. Integrating Article 5.3 with Article 17 will (i)strengthen policy coherence, ensuring that alternative livelihood policies are not undermined by tobacco industry interference; (ii)foster cross-sector collaboration addressing both tobacco industry interference and livelihood development; and (iii)enhance accountability and transparency in tobacco control efforts.

Smart city construction and new-type urbanization quality improvement

First, utilising text quantitative analysis techniques, this paper analyses the smart city pilot policy in depth and clarifies its theoretical mechanism that influence the quality of new-type urbanisation. The revised entropy technique is then used to calculate the new-type urbanisation quality of 276 Chinese cities with a prefecture level or higher from 2007 to 2018. The above action mechanism is evaluated using the Difference-in-Difference model, employing the smart city pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment (DID). The results indicate that the implementation of the smart city pilot policy can significantly enhance the quality of new-type urbanisation, and this conclusion is robust under a variety of conditions, including parallel trend testing, tendency score matching, exclusion of other policy interference and placebo testing. The analysis of heterogeneity indicates that the smart city pilot strategy has a greater impact on the qualitative improvement of new-type urbanisation in historic industrial bases, resource-based cities, and large-scale cities. The mechanism test confirmed that the construction of smart cities has improved the quality of new-type urbanisation primarily through the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure brought about by smart industrial policy and scientific and technological innovation fostered by smart government and smart people's livelihood policies.

The impacts of artisanal and small-scale gold mining on rural livelihood trajectories: Insights from Ghana

Rising gold prices, together with other challenges faced by smallholders, mean rural people in sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly taking advantage of ASGM's low barriers to entry and engage in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) to make money on a regular basis. Yet, adequate knowledge on the impact of ASGM's emergence on rural livelihood trajectories is lacking, particularly for emerging ASGM communities. Understanding the long-term dynamics of community livelihoods as small-scale mining emerges is important to inform the design of appropriate sustainable rural livelihood policies. Existing scholarship has predominantly examined livelihood snapshots rather than exploring how present livelihood outcomes have emerged over time, and for whom. Guided by the sustainable livelihood framework, this paper uses a household questionnaire survey, oral history interviews, focus group discussions and transect walks to investigate livelihood trajectories in three farming communities engaged in ASGM in Atiwa West district, Ghana, from the early 1990s up to 2021, focussing particularly on changes since the rise of ASGM in 2010. Three distinct livelihood trajectories emerge — consolidation, fluctuation, and marginalisation — reflecting the different pathways followed by rural households. In this constrained, yet shared resource space, ASGM's emergence has benefitted the farmers turned miners and enhanced their livelihood outcomes. But it has had damaging consequences for livelihoods dominated by subsistence farming so that more rural people find themselves locked into poverty, due to competition for arable farmlands with ASGM appealing as a more lucrative option in the short term. Findings evidence the differential and unintended consequences of livelihood adjustments. They highlight the urgent need for well-targeted policies and sustainable livelihood strategies in farming communities where ASGM is emerging to provide effective linkages between rural livelihoods, agriculture, and mining, and address growing inequalities in livelihood trajectories posed by ASGM's emergence.

Study on the impact of intelligent city pilot on green and low-carbon development

The intelligent city pilot policy is a major measure in China to promote urban development from factor driven and investment driven to innovation driven. Intelligent city construction can effectively coordinate specialized production factors and information sharing mechanism, promote digital information technology innovation, promote smart industry cluster, and expand ecological scenarios of clean industry application, so as to reduce carbon emissions. This paper reveals the internal mechanism of intelligent city construction to promote carbon emission reduction. Based on the quasi-natural experiments carried out in three batches of pilot construction of intelligent cities since 2012, the difference-in-difference model (DID) is used to identify its impact on urban carbon emissions. The research results show that the pilot construction of intelligent cities is conducive to reducing carbon emissions, which is still robust under multiple scenarios such as placebo test and endogenous test. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the pilot policies have a more significant carbon emission reduction effect on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, non-resource-based cities, and non-old industrial bases. After further quantitative analysis of 917 pilot policy texts based on Simhash algorithm, Jieba word segmentation, and word frequency statistics, it is found that intelligent industry policies reduce carbon emissions by driving data elements agglomeration and optimizing industrial structure, while intelligent government and intelligent people's livelihood policies improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions through green technological innovation. Counterfactual tests using machine learning algorithms show that the later the pilot batch, the better the sustainable carbon emission reduction effect of intelligent city pilot policies.

Morphology of transition pathway matters: System dynamics to assess alternative livelihood policy towards groundwater sustainability

Groundwater sustainability is defined as developing and using groundwater resources to meet the needs of future generations without detrimental impacts on the environment (groundwater) or society (livelihood). In response to the growing concern to achieve that, Alternative Livelihood (AL) policy has been proposed that implies replacing irrigated agriculture with livelihoods relying less on water. This policy inevitably takes place in the long term and deals with the Transition Pathway (TP), which tends to follow a typical S-shaped path over time. This paper sheds light on the morphology of the S-shaped course on AL policy success, which has yet to remain unsubstantiated. For this purpose, a case study is adopted to launch an AL policy to fulfil groundwater sustainability, decreasing irrigated agriculture upon a TP and developing shrimp farms to compensate for reduced agricultural value-added. In the following, based on a system dynamics analysis, the AL policy's success is assessed under various TP morphologies for a long-term simulation. The results indicate that even significantly shrinking irrigated agriculture does not ensure sustainable groundwater without an effective TP morphology.

From goods to goats: examining post-disaster livelihood recovery in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake 2015

Disasters can have substantial impacts on people’s livelihoods in developing countries. Further, if the need for livelihood interventions is ignored or delayed, the crisis may trigger unexpected harmful consequences in the affected households in the aftermath. Therefore, restoring livelihoods should remain a priority in the post-disaster recovery process. However, such recoveries in rural contexts and developing countries, like Nepal, are complex as the livelihood restoration process is affected by serious spatial, socio-economic, and political factors. We employed qualitative research methods in four highly affected districts in the 2015 Nepal Earthquake (7.8 Mw) to examine post-disaster livelihoods recovery. Our paper critically assesses the humanitarian response based on the narratives and lived experiences of affected households. The findings show that humanitarian assistance was crucial in addressing several unmet needs of disaster-affected rural households in resource-poor settings in Nepal. However, the interventions were generally fragmented, insufficient, neoliberal led (forcing market dependencies), and largely business-as-usual in their orientation. Previous studies in Nepal paid insufficient attention to the goods provided to affected households in the name of recovery. Therefore, our paper scrutinises selected humanitarian objects, such as power tillers, and unpacks their political economy and effectiveness in local contexts. Further, our findings show that some livelihood policies reinforced the gap between the haves and have-nots, thereby reproducing pre-disaster inequalities in the post-disaster field.

The limits of livelihood diversification and sustainable household well-being, evidence from China

Diversification of household livelihood activities has become an important pillar of rural development strategies for improving living standards and household well-being (HWB). Yet diversification's relationship with rural development has not been assessed in working landscapes for households that span a range of HWB levels, which has important implications for sustainable rural transitions and resource use. This paper examines the role of livelihood diversification on HWB. We use a novel dataset from northeast China to develop a quantitative index that reflects sustainable livelihoods derived from principles laid out in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which we refer to as an index of sustainable household well-being (SHWB). We assess the role of diversification against other factors that relate to SHWB, and examine non-linearities in these relationships though quantile regression methods. While past work has shown how diversification can improve SHWB outcomes for low-resource communities, here we test the limits of diversification as a household poverty reduction strategy. Our analysis shows that livelihood diversification is associated with improvements in SHWB for households with low and medium levels of wellbeing (<50th percentile in our sample). At higher levels of SHWB, education and income have much greater influence. Our results are robust to alternate measures of well-being and diversification metrics, and have implications for sustainable livelihood policy and improving household well-being. Supporting and encouraging livelihood diversification should play a significant role in poverty reduction strategies for the poorest of households, but with increased levels of market integration and regional development, specialization may be appropriate.

Impact of payments for forest environmental services on households' livelihood: a case study in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

AbstractPayments for environmental services have been popularly used in environmental management and an increasing number of studies assesses their contribution to local livelihoods. This study employs propensity score matching with a dataset of 404 indigenous households in the Central Highlands of Vietnam to evaluate the effect of payments for forest environmental services (PFES) on their livelihoods. Participating in PFES increased households' employment and income from activities related to natural forests. Income from PFES allowed households to enhance productive investment and promote income from cultivation activities. All of this, in turn, increased their annual income, job satisfaction, living expenditures, and reduced the amount of any loan. Additionally, PFES enhanced opportunities to participate in training courses and traditional community activities. This confirms that PFES is not only a good initiative for forest management but also a livelihood policy for communities.

Appreciating the Role of Communication in Promoting Sustainable Livelihood: A Closer Look at Some Selected Literature

Livelihood interventions are essential to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs). Issues such as poverty (SDG 1), hunger and food security (SDG 2), education (SDG 4), and consumption and production (SDG 12) are central to improved livelihoods. To this end, development actors are encouraged to implement carefully designed livelihood interventions to improve the lives of people. A vital argument which dominates livelihood discourses is the issue of sustainability. The debates on sustainable livelihood appear unending, especially in developing nations where poverty continues to threaten the lives of many citizens. Particularly, there are varying positions on the concept of sustainable livelihood and its core elements. Indeed, the seeming lack of clarity on the concept of sustainable livelihood presents a challenge to development actors in their attempts to ensure improved livelihoods. Against this backdrop, this paper attempts to contribute to bringing clarity to the concept of sustainable livelihood and the role communication plays in its promotion through a review of some selected literature. The authors submit that sustainable livelihood cannot be achieved especially in developing countries without access to adequate information and improved communication strategies. They maintain that no livelihood policy can sustainably be implemented without consciously designed efforts on the part of stakeholders to integrate policy communication strategies into the policy. Finally, the authors contend that participatory communication approaches are central to any sustainable livelihood initiatives and must, therefore, be given the necessary preeminence in sustainable livelihood thinking and theorizing. Keywords: Livelihood, sustainable livelihood framework, information, participatory communication, policy communication.

Livelihood Resilience or Policy Attraction? Factors Determining Households' Willingness to Participate in Rural Tourism in Western China.

Rural tourism in developing countries has been regarded as a means for rural development, environment conservation and poverty alleviation. This study aims to examine the determining factors for rural households’ willingness to participate in rural tourism in western areas under the context of China’s rural revitalization strategy. Based on survey data from 22 tourism poverty alleviation villages located in the poor areas of western China, we characterize our results by stating that rural households’ livelihood resilience “push” on their willingness to participate, and that poverty alleviation policy perception and involvement “pull” on it. Among distinct livelihood adaptive strategy groups, i.e., farming-oriented households, migratory-oriented households and tourism-participating households, this study also revealed that buffer capacity was a significant driving force for the three types of household’s willingness. Positive poverty alleviation policy perception could attract migratory households to return to their hometowns to start tourism businesses; however, better self-organizing capacity decreased their willingness. In addition, both self-organization and learning capacity and positive policy perception and involvement encouraged tourism-participating households to engage in tourism activities continually. Finally, some practical implications and recommendations for further research are also discussed.

The role of social capital on household livelihood strategies: Review from theory to emperical research

Social capital is often identified as one of the most vital factors affecting households’ livelihood. However, literature on households’ livelihood has not cleared the role of social capital in livelihood, especially in livelihood strategies. This paper aims to review the relationship between social capital and household livelihood strategies. Based on previous papers in international journals and Vietnam journals, the author collected systematized and analyzed the role of social capital on livelihood strategies via the systematic review and other qualitative methods. Results show that there has been strong evidences about the relationship between social capital and livelihood strategies in theories and previous studies. Social capital has a direct effect along with indirect effects through other types of capital on livelihood. Besides that, methods of measuring social capital are diverse and depend on available data. Therefore, some aspects of that relationship revealed several research gaps, especially in empirical studies in Vietnam. The author suggested some dimensions in the role of social capital in research and applying livelihood policies in practice.

Impact of Ecotourism on Local Community’s Participation in Coastal Resource Management: Case of Palaui Island Protected Landscape and Seascape (PIPLS) in Northern Luzon, Philippines

The establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs) managed by the community has been a popular tool for coastal and resource management in the Philippines. As the MPAs limit the use of the resources, the eco-biological components of the marine environment have been preserved and maintained, which opened opportunities for ecotourism activities. Thus, ecotourism has been developed as one way of gaining economic benefits from the coastal and marine resources while conserving biodiversity and restoring critical habitats by shifting resource exploitation from an extractive to a non-extractive usage. This study was conducted using household surveys and key informant interviews to investigate whether ecotourism's development affects the local community's participation and support on MPA management using the case of Palaui Island Protected Landscape and Seascape (PIPLS) in northern Luzon, Philippines. The respondents recognized the impacts of ecotourism on their family welfare, fishing activities, and involvement in MPA management. In particular, ecotourism development strengthens local communities' support for coastal resource management, especially if it provides enough sources of income. The results of this study could provide information to resource managers and policymakers on crafting sustainable ecotourism and alternative livelihood policies in MPAs, taking into account its possible impacts on the coastal fishing communities.

Assessing Vulnerability to Climate Change in Smallholder Irrigation Schemes of Zimbabwe

Globally, climate change poses enormous threats to the livelihoods of rural communities in arid and semi-arid regions. Assessing the extent of vulnerability is critical to identify climate hot spots and develop appropriate adaptation policies and strategies. This paper uses the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) and the Livelihood Vulnerability Index—Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (LVI-IPCC) to compare vulnerability to climate change in the Exchange, Insukamini, and Ruchanyu smallholder irrigation schemes (SISs) in the Midlands Province of Zimbabwe. A questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 317 randomly selected households. Results show higher exposure and sensitivity to climate change in the Insukamini irrigation scheme despite the higher adaptive capacity. Both LVI and LVI-IPCC show that households in Insukamini irrigation scheme are more vulnerable to climate change than in Exchange and Ruchanyu irrigation schemes, attributed to water insecurity, poor social networks, and natural disasters and climate variability. The study recommends that development and investment in Insukamini and Ruchanyu should prioritize improving social networks while Exchange should primarily focus on improving livelihood strategies. Using the LVI-IPCC framework is a key methodology for understanding the vulnerability of communities in SISs and identifying areas that need prime development and investment. These results have implications on implementing investments and livelihood policies in SISs of Zimbabwe.

MPAs and Aspatial Policies in Artisanal Fisheries

Using a spatially explicit framework with low/middle-income country coastal characteristics, we explore whether aspatial policies augment the impact of marine protected areas (MPAs) and identify when MPAs create income burdens on communities. When MPAs are small and budget-constrained, they cannot resolve all of the marinescape’s open-access issues, but they can create win-win opportunities for ecological and economic goals at lower levels of enforcement. Aspatial policies—taxes, gear restrictions, license restrictions, and livelihood programs—improve the MPA’s ability to generate ecological gains, and licenses and livelihood policies can mitigate MPA-induced income burdens. Managers can use MPA location and enforcement level, in conjunction with the MPA’s impact on fish dispersal, to induce exit from fishing and to direct the spatial leakage of effort. Our framework provides further insights for conservation-development policy in coastal settings, and we explore stylized examples in Costa Rica and Tanzania.

Expert consensus on developing publicly-funded influenza vaccination project plan

The overall coverage rate of influenza vaccination in China has been only about 2% in recent years. At present, free influenza vaccination programs, also named the "Publicly-funded Influenza Vaccination Project", have been carried out for the specific groups (the elderly, school-age children, healthcare workers, etc.) through livelihood projects or policies to benefit the people in some areas of China, which has significantly increased the vaccine coverage in the target population. In order to promote the project to be launched in a scientific and orderly manner in more and more regions of China, we organized and compiled this consensus on implementation of publicly-funded influenza vaccination project, including the project's purpose, establishment, implementation, organization and management, which was based on the research of influenza vaccine application strategies in some European countries and the United States and combined with the relevant policies, technical guidelines and past experiences in China. Meanwhile, the evaluation indicators, such as vaccination rates, effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness, and relevant assessment methods were also comprehensively expounded, aiming to provide reference for regions that are willing to implement or have launched the project.

Modeling Market Integration and Asymmetric Price Transmission Dynamics of Yam Markets in Ghana

Functioning agricultural markets are fundamental to unlock economic growth and to accelerate agricultural development. Understanding the behavior of agriculture markets is crucial for price, poverty and livelihood policy strategies in agrarian economies. To assess price transmission and market efficiencies of Ghanaian yam markets spatial market integration analysis of five major yam markets: Techiman, Tamale, Wa, Kumasi and Accra was conducted. Monthly wholesale price data between January 2006 and June 2018 were used. Results from the momentum threshold autoregressive (M-TAR) model indicated the presence of co-integration and price transmission asymmetries. Thus, price increases in Techiman reference market are more rapidly transmitted to the other regional markets than price reductions. It is recommended that the source of this type of asymmetry be investigated as it favors middlemen at the expense of producers and retailers/consumers for appropriate marketing policy intervention.

Making of Homes as Workplaces: Notes for a Spatial Approach to Women’s Livelihood

Understanding women’s work requires going beyond traditional theorizations of paid employment by incorporating both their work and care responsibilities. The complexity of this is apparent when looking at home-based work, which is a significant category of women’s informal employment. The making of “home” and “workplace” is characterized by particular sets of negotiations and relations in the lives of home-based workers, specifically in resettlement colonies. Based on detailed interviews with women home-based workers in two resettlement colonies—Kalyanpuri and Savda Ghevra in the city of Delhi, the paper aims to qualitatively understand how home-based work is constituted and the implications of how the home becomes the workplace as well. It analyses how women leverage space and time to structure paid and unpaid work while accommodating the costs and risks that they come to bear owing to their location both within homes and the larger value chains. It argues for a more synchronous approach between housing and livelihood policies and programmes that are able to factor in women’s realities and aspirations.