Livelihood resilience and strategies of rural residents of earthquake-threatened areas in Sichuan Province, China

Based on a survey of 327 households in four districts and counties of Sichuan Province, China that were affected by the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquakes, the authors construct a framework for analyzing livelihood resilience and livelihood strategy selection. They comprehensively analyze the characteristics of livelihood resilience and livelihood strategy and explore their correlation using an ordinal multi-classification logistic regression model.

The results show that:

1. Among 327 sample households, 90.21% were non-farming, 3.67% were part-time households and 6.12% were farming households. Residents' livelihood resilience is mainly based on their disaster prevention and mitigation capacity.
2. As far as the correlation between livelihood resilience and livelihood strategies is concerned, the stronger the buffer capacity in livelihood resilience, the more rural residents tend to engage in non-farming activities to obtain income.