Role of capitals and capabilities in ensuring economic resilience of land conservation efforts: A case study of the grain for green project in China’s Loess Hills

The article describes how economic resilience of farming households can be measured using a composite indicator of revealed adaptive actions, and investigates how capabilities of farm households to recombine human, financial, natural and physical capitals are linked to observed economic resilience to land set-aside interventions. The land set-aside intervention known as the Grain for Green Project (GGP), which has been altering livelihoods of farming households in China’s Loess Hills since 1999, is taken as a case study. Household surveys were conducted in three V-shaped valleys and three riparian areas in Yanhe Township in northwestern China in an effort to measure household resilience and explore its’ relationship to forms of capital. A composite index of adaptive strategies that can reorganize livelihood activities under land set-aside intervention into a new economic equilibrium is crafted using an objective weighting scheme based on principal component analysis. Subsequently, a multiple regression model was utilized to examine the relationship between the composite resilience index and various indicators related to human, social, financial, natural and physical capitals. The results reveal the latent structure and internal correlations of adaptive strategies, and present quantitative evidence about the relationship between livelihood capitals and household economic resilience. The analysis shows that household resilience deteriorates when the ratio of GGP land to cultivated farmland goes above a threshold level, and revealed that interventions targeting various forms of capitals can enhance the economic resilience for households to conservation efforts.     

Property,Power, and the Political Economy of Farming Households in Costa Rica

The relationship between size of landholdings and household economic status is fairly clear, particularly in societies where agricultural exports dominate the economy. Less clear is the effect of differential access to and control of productive property within households and the ways in which it affects the economic opportunities of individual household members. This paper examines property holdings and inheritance patterns among coffeeproducing households in Costa Rica. I show that while cultural norms regulatin g labor contributions do affect the balance of authority within households, de facto property rights can significantly enhance an individual's decision-making power both within households and between generationally-related households. Unless new opportunities arise, as population increases, coffee production expands, and lands become increasingly scarce, we shall likely see increased stratification both within households—as women inherit less land—and among households, as some sons inherit at the expense of other sons and daughters.     

Women and development: A highland New Guinea example

This paper presents an analysis of household variables and their relationship to success in cash cropping among the Gainj of Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Censuses and household surveys from 1978, the year in which cash cropping began, and 1983 provide data that show different patterns of change in household structure for more and less commercially successful households. The results illustrate the importance of women's labor in economic development and the dynamic nature of the relationship between household structure and economic development.     

Environment,livelihood and household: The ethno‐history of Rana Tharus Badaghar households

This paper focuses on the changes occurring in households in the indigenous Rana Tharus community. I discuss the household not in terms of physical structure but instead on the social aspects: how people relate to each other through the lens of the household context. I argue that the fluid nature of households makes its flexible to different ecological environments and socio‐economic scenarios. My ethnography of Rana households clearly illustrated that the formation, structure and management of Rana households was fundamentally linked to people's livelihoods. Before 1950s, abundant land resources allowed Ranas to live in joint‐type households. This particular household arrangement not only fulfilled labour needs but also secured the mutual security for every household member. Gradually, undivided and big households (known in Rana as Badaghar) became the ideal model for Ranas as soon as such establishments did not become divided or separated. This household structure also served as an important safety net for most Ranas and fundamental to other social relationships especially Mukhiya (household head system) and Kurmaa (patrilineal kin). However, since the 1950s, new socio‐economic landscapes have significantly challenged the maintenance of traditional Rana households. Within the lifetime of most Ranas, they first experienced household fission and the disappearance of the Mukhiya system. The dynamic relationships between Rana household and new ecological, social and economic landscapes are explored here. It is concluded that the household is a critical institution allowing anthropologists to better understand the long‐term social impacts caused by state policies and ecological changes. This is because people often practice their new household relations in their everyday life as a response to environmental and livelihood changes.     

Labor Process and the Environment: The Effects of Labor Availability and Compensation on the Quality of Herding in the Sahel

The relationship between investments of labor to agricultural production and environmental degradation in rural areas of the developing world is complex. This paper reports on qualitative and quantitative research focused on the effects of labor availability and its compensation on the way in which cattle are herded in the Maasina region of Central Mali. Within this particular region, two social relationships determine the level and form of herder compensation: that between herd patriarch and cattle owner, and that between herd patriarch and herder. Both the nature of these relationships and variations in herding practice are described prior to a presentation of statistical analyses of the effects of household labor availability and cattle wealth on travel and grazing management decisions. Reductions in both the availability of herding labor and in the economic security of Fulsse households are shown to lead to reduced herd mobility and more constricted grazing patterns with significant environmental implications.     

2001: A Household Analysis of Huastec Maya Agriculture and Land Use at the Height of the Coffee Crisis

Over the last decade, historically low market prices for Coffea arabica have affected smallholder shade coffee-growing households throughout northern Latin America. In an effort to better understand household response to the coffee crisis and associated landscape changes, this paper examines agricultural production choices and land use patterns among Huastec Maya coffee-growing households. Using data compiled from 47 household interviews, I describe the cultural-geographical landscape in which the Huastec Maya land use system is embedded. In addition, I examine the economics of household production through a financial cost-benefit analysis and through an exploration of the relationship between land availability and land use patterns. Results show that economic inputs and returns from agriculture are highly variable, and that, in 2001, coffee cultivation was not a viable cash-generating strategy for most households. Land availability was found to have a significant effect on land use decisions, especially the proportion of land area devoted to fallow. Most importantly, however, the case study suggests that a purely economic approach does not suffice in explaining why the Huastec Maya continued to grow coffee in 2001, after years of low prices. Household production choices and livelihood strategies must also be viewed within a cultural context.     

Differential Benefits of Multi- and Single-Household Grassland Management Patterns in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau of China

Two grassland management patterns, multi-household and single-household, have developed in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau of China since grasslands came under household control. In the multi-household management pattern (MMP), grassland is jointly managed by two or more households without fences between individual household pastures. The single-household management pattern (SMP) refers to a system in which grassland is separately managed by an individual household with fences separating these pastures from those of other households. This paper compares the benefits of the two management patterns using a field investigation and a social survey. We found that the MMP has greater economic benefits compared with the SMP because multi-household cooperation was more likely to reduce production costs and so reduce resource expenditures. Furthermore, the social benefits from MMP collaboration were also important. The results also indicated that the SMP was more likely to cause grassland degradation. In conclusion, the comprehensive benefits created under the MMP were greater as a result of social learning in this coupled human and natural ecosystem. The MMP has important policy implications for conservation and development initiatives in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and other similar areas.     

The Importance of Bushmeat in the Livelihoods of West African Cash-Crop Farmers Living in a Faunally-Depleted Landscape

Bushmeat is an important resource in the livelihoods of many rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and may be a crucial safety-net for the most vulnerable households, especially during times of economic hardship. However, little is known about the impacts of wildlife depletion on these functions. This study quantifies the role of bushmeat in diversified rural household economies in a wildlife depleted forest-farm landscape in Ghana, assessing its importance overall, as well as differentiated by the relative vulnerability of households. Using repeat socioeconomic questionnaires (N=787) among 63 households over a one-year period, the following hypotheses were tested: (a) vulnerable households harvest more bushmeat; (b) bushmeat contributes a greater proportion of household production in vulnerable households; (c) bushmeat is more important for cash income than consumption in vulnerable households; and (d) bushmeat sales are more important for vulnerable households. The bushmeat harvest value averaged less than US$1.0 per day for 89% of households and comprised less than 7% of household production value. Household wealth and gender of the household head had little effect on the importance of bushmeat. However, bushmeat harvest and sales were highest during the agricultural lean season. Overall, most harvested bushmeat (64%) was consumed, enabling households to spend 30% less on meat/fish purchases. These findings suggest that, despite heavily depleted wildlife and diversified livelihoods, bushmeat continues to have an important role in rural livelihoods by acting as a safety net for income smoothing and reducing household expenditure during times of economic hardship.     

Household Extension and Fragmentation: Investigating the Socio-Environmental Dynamics of Mossi Domestic Transitions

Recent studies in West Africa and other parts of the world suggest that globalization and modernization make extended forms of domestic organization untenable in the face of modern economic and ecological circumstances. Unlike the large and extended domestic groups of pre-industrial and pre-colonial periods, households today tend to be small and nuclear. Thirty years ago, a series of case studies conducted on the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso documented this nucleation process among Mossi rural communities and predicted the decline and demise of Mossi extended households. This article tests the degree to which these predictions were correct based on ethnographic fieldwork in three villages in 2004. The results indicate that extended households indeed persist. Their persistence is explained by analyzing the roles of environmental and social change on the twin processes of household extension and fragmentation. Regional desiccation, off-farm income-generating opportunities, and agricultural intensification have created conditions that equally promote both household extension and fragmentation.     

Ecologists can enable communities to implement malaria vector control in Africa

Background

Malaria imposes significant costs on households and the poor are disproportionately affected. However, cost data are often from quantitative surveys with a fixed recall period. They do not capture costs that unfold slowly over time, or seasonal variations. Few studies investigate the different pathways through which malaria contributes towards poverty. In this paper, a framework indicating the complex links between malaria, poverty and vulnerability at the household level is developed and applied using data from rural Kenya.

Methods

Cross-sectional surveys in a wet and dry season provide data on treatment-seeking, cost-burdens and coping strategies (n = 294 and n = 285 households respectively). 15 case study households purposively selected from the survey and followed for one year provide in-depth qualitative information on the links between malaria, vulnerability and poverty.

Results

Mean direct cost burdens were 7.1% and 5.9% of total household expenditure in the wet and dry seasons respectively. Case study data revealed no clear relationship between cost burdens and vulnerability status at the end of the year. Most important was household vulnerability status at the outset. Households reporting major malaria episodes and other shocks prior to the study descended further into poverty over the year. Wealthier households were better able to cope.

Conclusion

The impacts of malaria on household economic status unfold slowly over time. Coping strategies adopted can have negative implications, influencing household ability to withstand malaria and other contingencies in future. To protect the poor and vulnerable, malaria control policies need to be integrated into development and poverty reduction programmes.     

Assessing the Impacts of Agrobiodiversity Maintenance on Food Security Among Farming Households in Sri Lanka’s Dry Zone

Farmers’ maintenance of agrobiodiversity is fundamental to global food security, particularly in a world increasingly affected by climate change. Biodiversity helps to buffer agroecosystems from stresses like climatic variability, and the crop genetic diversity conserved with biodiverse agroecosystems is critical for plant breeding both locally and globally. Yet, despite these benefits, few studies have directly assessed the implications of household–level agrobiodiversity maintenance on household food security. Drawing on survey data collected in Sri Lanka’s Hambantota District, we evaluated the plant diversity maintained by small–scale farming households in both homegardens and crop fields and determined the relationships between this diversity and their households’ food security. We also considered how a suite of additional demographic, household, community, and farm characteristics relate to both the plant diversity maintained by a household and their food security. Similar to previous studies, the age of the agricultural decision-maker and the age and size of households’ homegardens positively correlated with the overall species richness of farming systems. Older homegardens were also identified to be more evenly distributed in their species abundance, and market–oriented households had significantly higher species richness but lower Shannon Indices. Most notably, household socioeconomic status and material wealth were important to both agrobiodiversity maintenance and household food security, while no significant relationships between species richness and food security measures were detected. These findings suggest that effort aiming to increase the food security of small–scale farming households in Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, should target those farming households with a paucity of socioeconomic assets, as these households lack both agroecological and economic resources to overcome shocks, such as those associated with climate change.     

Infant mortality and intra‐household competition in the Northern Islands of Orkney,Scotland, 1855–2001

This study applies principles from the theory of household life cycles to the study of early childhood mortality in the population of the Northern Orkney Islands, Scotland. The primary hypothesis is that unfavorable household economic conditions resulting from changes in household demographic composition increase the risk of death for children under the age of 5 years because of limited resources and intra‐household competition. We apply Cox proportional hazards models to nearly 5,000 linked birth and death records from the Northern Orkney Islands, Scotland, from the period 1855 to 2001. The dependent variable is the child's risk of death before age 5. Findings suggest that children in households with unfavorable age compositions face higher risk of death. This elevated risk of death continues once heterogeneity among children, islands, and households is controlled. Results also show differential risk of death for male children, children of higher birth orders, and twin births. The analyses present evidence for intra‐household competition in this historic setting. The most convincing evidence of competition is found in the effects of household consumer/producer ratios and twinning on child mortality risks. Am J Phys Anthropol 151:191–201, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

农户生计与生态系统服务关系的区域差异及驱动机制——以密云水库上游流域为例

深入揭示生态系统与农户福祉之间的关系,对实现农户差异化管理及区域可持续发展具有重要意义。本研究以密云水库上游流域(包括北京市和河北省的部分区域)为研究区域,基于1754份农户调查问卷数据,通过统计计量方法对比分析了流域内北京市、河北省农户福祉水平(以家庭总收入表示)与生态系统服务依赖性(以生态系统依赖性指数表示)的关系。结果表明: 流域内京冀农户生计与生态系统的互作模式均可分为4类,但京冀两地不同模式占比差异较大。北京农户样本中,占比最高的是高福祉-低依赖模式(33.9%),农户人均年收入显著高于河北农户,农户的各项生计资本也较河北省农户高;河北农户中,不提倡的低福祉-高依赖模式仍占比39.1%,对提升农户福祉水平至关重要的人力资本素质、社会资本、金融资本等均显著低于北京农户;河北农户主要依赖农业生产收入(41.2%),对土地的开发利用程度显著较高;相对于北京农户,河北农户的自然资源条件、人力资本素质对农户生计的影响更加显著。保持适当家庭规模、不断提高劳动力教育水平、提高低收入家庭的生态补偿标准是形成农户与生态系统良好互动关系(高福祉-低依赖型)的关键因素。     

The time to extinction for a stochastic SIS-household-epidemic model

We analyse a Markovian SIS epidemic amongst a finite population partitioned into households. Since the population is finite, the epidemic will eventually go extinct, i.e., have no more infectives in the population. We study the effects of population size and within household transmission upon the time to extinction. This is done through two approximations. The first approximation is suitable for all levels of within household transmission and is based upon an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process approximation for the diseases fluctuations about an endemic level relying on a large population. The second approximation is suitable for high levels of within household transmission and approximates the number of infectious households by a simple homogeneously mixing SIS model with the households replaced by individuals. The analysis, supported by a simulation study, shows that the mean time to extinction is minimized by moderate levels of within household transmission.     

Self-Reported Serious Illnesses in Rural Cambodia: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Background

There is substantial evidence that ill-health is a major cause of impoverishment in developing countries. Major illnesses can have a serious economic impact on poor households through treatment costs and income loss. However, available methods for measuring the impact of ill-health on household welfare display several shortcomings and new methods are thus needed. To understand the potential complex impact of major illnesses on household livelihoods, a study on poverty and illness was conducted in rural Cambodia, as part of an international comparative research project. A cross-sectional survey was performed to identify households affected by major illness for further in-depth interviews.

Methodology and Principal Findings

5,975 households in three rural health districts were randomly selected through a two-stage cluster sampling and interviewed. 27% of the households reported at least one member with a serious illness in the year preceding the survey and 15% of the household members reported suffering from at least one serious illness. The most reported conditions include common tropical infectious diseases, chronic diseases (notably hypertension and heart diseases) and road traffic accidents. Such conditions were particularly concentrated among the poor, children under five, women, and the elderly. Poor women often reported complications related to pregnancy and delivery as serious illnesses.

Conclusions and Significance

Despite some methodological limitations, this study provides new information on the frequency of self-reported serious illnesses among the rural Cambodia''s population, which serves as a basis for further in-depth investigation on ‘major illnesses’ and their economic consequences on poor households. This can in turn help policy makers to formulate appropriate interventions to protect the poor from the financial burden associated with ill-health. Our findings suggest that every year a considerable proportion of rural population in Cambodia, especially the poor and vulnerable, are affected by serious illnesses, both communicable and non-communicable diseases.     

Child growth and the economic value of children in rural Bolivia

Previous investigations have yielded contradictory conclusions concerning the importance of the economic contribution of children to households in agricultural societies. The present study evaluates the significance of children 's economic input in rural Ancoraimes, Bolivia by using child growth as an indirect indicator of the economic value of children. Children whose households differed in size and age composition were compared on the basis of five anthropometric measurements. Children from households with many young, nonproducing children were found to be significantly smaller for their age than children from households with few nonproducing children. Absolute household size had no major effect on child growth. While young children have a negative effect on the growth of children in the household, the positive effect of children as they grow older appears to make up for this loss. In terms of child growth, children are neither a net liability nor a net asset to agricultural households in Ancoraimes.     

Nontimber forest product gathering in Ritigala forest (Sri Lanka): Household strategies and community differentiation

Sri Lanka has a long tradition of forest product use. The relationship of people with a dry zone forest was studied using a sample of 48 households in two villages that varied in distance to the forest and access to the market. All households interviewed collected subsistence forest products and a majority of them also collected commercial products. The daily peak-season income from commercial gathering was 4.5 to 7.7 times the daily labor wage. There is a strong gender specialization, with commercial gathering dominated by men whereas subsistence gathering is almost exclusively the task of women. The average forest-derived household income in the village closer to the forest and with better market access was nearly double that of the other village. Family size as a proxy of labor availability was the main discriminating factor between those households who did and those who did not gather commercial products. A small inverse relationship between forest gathering and size of household agricultural land (particularly paddy rice) was observed. No clear relationship was found between total household income and forest derived income, contradicting the view that commercial forest gathering is an exclusive activity of the poorest households.     

Food sharing at meals

The presence of a kinship link between nuclear families is the strongest predictor of interhousehold sharing in an indigenous, predominantly Dolgan food-sharing network in northern Russia. Attributes such as the summed number of hunters in paired households also account for much of the variation in sharing between nuclear families. Differences in the number of hunters in partner households, as well as proximity and producer/consumer ratios of households, were investigated with regard to cost-benefit models. The subset of households involved in reciprocal meal sharing is 26 of 84 household host-guest pairs. The frequency of reciprocal meal sharing between families in this subset is positively correlated with average household relatedness. The evolution of cooperation through clustering may illuminate the relationship between kinship and reciprocity at this most intimate level of food sharing.     

Pursuing More Sustainable Consumption by Analyzing Household Metabolism in European Countries and Cities

Bringing about more sustainable consumption patterns is an important challenge for society and science. In this article the concept of household metabolism is applied to analyzing consumption patterns and to identifying possibilities for the development of sustainable household consumption patterns. Household metabolism is determined in terms of total energy requirements, including both direct and indirect energy requirements, using a hybrid method. This method enables us to evaluate various determinants of the environmental load of consumption consistently at several levels—the national level, the local level, and the household level.
The average annual energy requirement of households varies considerably between the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Sweden, as well as within these countries. The average expenditure level per household explains a large part of the observed variations. Differences between these countries are also related to the efficiency of the production sectors and to the energy supply system. The consumption categories of food, transport, and recreation show the largest contributions to the environmental load. A comparison of consumer groups with different household characteristics shows remarkable differences in the division of spending over the consumption categories.
Thus, analyses of different types of households are important for providing a basis for options to induce decreases of the environmental load of household consumption. At the city level, options for change are provided by an analysis of the city infrastructure, which determines a large part of the direct energy use by households (for transport and heating). At the national level, energy efficiency in production and in electricity generation is an important trigger for decreasing household energy requirements.