Assessment And Influencing Factors On The Households' Livelihoods Resilience In The Loess Plateau Of Northern Shaanxi

Complex external environmental changes have brought huge impacts and challenges to households' livelihoods.How to maintain the livelihoods under frequent disturbances and reduce the incidence of poverty is an urgent problem to be solved.The Livelihood Resilience Analysis Framework helps to comprehensively assess the interference faced by households' livelihoods and the responsiveness and adaptability of households,and provides guidance for promoting the sustainable development of households' livelihoods.Based on the theory of livelihood resilience,this paper builds a framework for the analysis of livelihood resilience.According to the research route “evolution of rural livelihoods-the assessment of households' livelihood resilience-the identification of obstacle factors-the mechanism of action-the optimization of livelihood resilience”.The aim of the research is to analyze the livelihood resilience of households in Yanchuan,located in the Loess Plateau region of northern Shaanxi.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Every significant change in the social and economic fields has promoted the transformation of households' livelihoods.Since the founding of the People's Republic of China,the evolution of rural livelihoods in Yanchuan has gone through three stages: the traditional agricultural production stage(1949-1977),the new kind agricultural rapid development stage(1978-2013),the livelihood diversification stage(2014-).With the development of the social economy,the development of households' livelihoods has also evolved from single to diversified.(2)Constructing the evaluation index system of livelihood resilience from three dimensions: buffer capacity,adaptive capacity and transformation capacity.The comprehensive index method is used to evaluate the level of rural households' resilience.According to the source of income,the households are divided into six types,households' livelihood resilience and differences in various dimensions of different types are as follows:(1)Livelihood resilience level: new agriculture households>income equilibrium households> wage management households> labor-oriented households> traditional agriculture households> subsidy-dependent households,most of the households are medium and low resilience.(2)buffer capacity level: new agriculture households> wage management households> income equilibrium households> labor-oriented households>traditional agriculture households> subsidy-dependent households,except for subsidized dependent agriculture,the other five livelihoods households have a large internal difference in buffer capacity.(3)Adaptability level: new agriculture households> wage management households> income equilibrium households> traditional agriculture households> labor-oriented households> subsidy-dependent households,the level of adaptability of households is generally low;(4)level of transformation ability:Labor-oriented households> income equilibrium households> Wage management households> new agriculture households> subsidy-dependent households> Traditional agriculture households,the internal differences in the buffer capacity of all types are relatively large.(3)The application of the obstacle model identifies the main obstacle factors affecting the resilience of households' livelihoods.The results are as follows:(1)Whether to purchase insurance and the number of skills training are common obstacle factor for all types of households,indicating that the awareness of the risk of livelihood and technology are the most critical factor affecting the resilience of households' livelihoods.The barrier factors shared by some households include family deposits,whether there is a village leader in the family,whether they are the poor and policy support,indicating that the financial capital,social capital,government and policy support of households are important factors.(2)Natural environment changes and socio-economic changes constitute external disturbances of livelihood resilience.Government management promotes the resilience of households' livelihoods.Households' livelihood capital and livelihood strategies are the key to the analysis of livelihood resilience.(4)In order to improve the resilience of households' livelihood,this paper proposes corresponding countermeasures.At the government management level: reduce external disturbances by strengthening disaster warning and prevention measures,establishing a integral land transfer system and promoting rural industrial development;and enhancing households' adaptive capacity by improving rural education level,strengthening skills training,and promoting various types of insurance.Improve the ability of households to transform their livelihoods by expanding policy coverage and enhancing the protection of households' livelihoods.At the households level: purchasing insurance and participating in skills training are the adaptation measures that all types of households should adopt.Inaddition,traditional agricultural households can adjust the agricultural planting structure and expand the special planting area such as forest fruit industry and shed planting;new agricultural households can expand the planting area by land transfer,and actively join the professional cooperatives;the labor-oriented,wage management households should increase their social resources;subsidy-dependent households should purchase social insurance,apply for appropriate social security,and develop the industry as much as possible;The income equilibrium households should actively transform to a higher income level of livelihoods,develop characteristic farming or stabilize employment.