Household socio-economic characteristics and their effect on livelihood strategy preferences in Shawbury, Qumbu

At the centre of rural development are household livelihood strategies. The livelihoods of South Africa’s rural African poor have long been characterized by diverse activities, and intertwined with urban opportunities. This study describes the livelihood strategies of rural households, identifies the determinants of these livelihood strategies and seeks to identify the role of preferences and household characteristics in changing livelihood strategies in Shawbury in the small town in Qumbu. It also identifies the relationships between household and individual characteristics and livelihood strategies. A random sampling technique was used to select 100 households in Shawbury. Descriptive analysis techniques were used to describe the characteristics of the households and livelihood strategies and to identify the relationships between household characteristics and livelihood strategy preferences, a multinomial logit regression model was used. The livelihood strategies used for the multinomial logit regression were commercial agricultural production/ production for selling; subsistence agricultural production/ production for consumption; non-farm employment; social grants and remittances. For much of the research available for livelihood strategies, tools such as the sustainable livelihoods framework have been the focus for studying the determinants of livelihood strategies; however these tools have little to no consideration for the aspirations and preferences of the individuals in question. This study highlights some possible tools that could be used to examine the influence of aspirations and preferences on changing livelihood strategies including the consumer choice framework, the domestic development cycle, the social network framework for decision making, the social systems approach and conjoint analysis. For this study, the actual preferences of livelihood strategies among the households are presented using conjoint analysis. This study finds that households in the same area have different characteristics and that livelihood strategies of Shawbury’s households are primarily non- farm, that include dependency on remittances, social grants and formal employment. It finds that households that generate income from wage employment (non-farm) and farm activities are better off than other households. Analysis of the characteristics of rural households also revealed that age, labour endowment, education, and land size holding are some of the barriers that poor households in rural areas face when attempting to enter into high-return livelihood strategies. The multinomial logit regression model has helped to identify some of the factors that influence the preference of certain livelihood strategies by households, are gender of the household head, age of the household head, size of the land owned, and educational level of the household head, household size, and livestock value. This analysis presents evidence about the relationship between household characteristics contributing to the adoption of certain livelihood strategies by people of Shawbury. The conjoint analysis has helped to identify that the most preferred to the least preferred livelihood activities are non-farm labour activities, crop production, animal production, contact with family/leisure and other natural resource based activities respectively