Livelihood Diversification Analysis
Livelihood diversification analysis studies how rural households spread their activities and income across multiple sources rather than relying on a single occupation or crop. Developed conceptually by Frank Ellis and refined empirically by Christopher Barrett, Thomas Reardon, and Patrick Webb, it combines the enumeration and classification of household income activities with quantitative measures of diversity — the number of income sources, the share of non-farm income, and concentration indices such as the Herfindahl or Simpson index — to characterise livelihood portfolios and distinguish diversification driven by distress from that driven by opportunity.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Ellis, F. (1998). Household strategies and rural livelihood diversification. The Journal of Development Studies, 35(1), 1-38. · DOI 10.1080/00220389808422553
- Barrett, C. B., Reardon, T., & Webb, P. (2001). Nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural Africa: concepts, dynamics, and policy implications. Food Policy, 26(4), 315-331. · DOI 10.1016/S0306-9192(01)00014-8
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.