Without Rice, Even the Cleverest Housewife Cannot Cook: Sustainable Livelihoods Research in a Poor Chinese Village

This paper presents findings of a qualitative study investigating the assets, the risks and shocks, and the anti-risk mechanisms of the households of a poor village in rural northern China. The paper explores the vulnerability of the rural households to becoming impoverished and presents some implications for Chinese social policy. The research shows that income sources and assets of the households were considerably varied, and that this, in turn, affected the kinds of strategies they could implement to manage risk. Poorer households had fewer assets, smaller social networks, and less capacity to manage risk than better-off households, despite all living in the same poor village. Moreover, poorer households were much more likely to have family members with chronic ill-health or disability. These findings point to a need to ensure better access for all rural households to social support, health and care services, and opportunities to find new sources of income within their village.