A ripple in development? - Channel Research

were distributed over time. Who received aid first in the immediate
aftermath of the tsunami based on government security regulations at
the time? Who received aid later? Who received more aid? Who received
less aid?
Household livelihood histories were collected from all the different
members of a household who happened to be present at the time the
interviews were conducted (380 persons interviewed as mentioned in
the introduction), thereby enabling greater triangulation and crosschecking
of facts and chronologies. The stories they tell recount their
lives from before the tsunami and up to the present moment of the
evaluation. One of the key questions asked was whether individuals in
a household had inherited a specific livelihood skill from within the family.
To illustrate, a household may consist of fishermen who learned
their specific skills from their fathers and grandfathers. If their livelihoods
were completely destroyed because of the tsunami, the evaluation
team would try to understand how the fishermen adapted given the
institutional arrangements at the time. Did they try to build new skills as
construction workers for reconstruction projects? Or did they resort to
being unskilled day labourers looking for paid work where ever available?
When did they resume fishing as their main livelihood activity (if at
all?)? As households were asked to tell their stories about changes over
time, the evaluation team tried to understand adaptations and adjustments
that they made and how external aid played a role.
If livelihood security was achieved at the later point in time of the
evaluation, household histories would reflect a predictable and stable
pattern of income generating activities to meet consumption needs. As
most of the affected households in all three contexts were located in the
agricultural and fishing sectors and subsistence economies, this pattern
of income generation and consumption should be relatively predictable
for each year. However this annual pattern and the volume of activity
may be expected to vary depending upon any fluctuations in market
demand, sudden price hikes such as those witnessed in the rise in food
prices in late 2008 etc 41 .
As a consequence there is a deficit of resources where consumption
exceeds income; household welfare is then reduced in the given time
period. The solution to address this deficit is for the household to seek
out alternative income generating activities, where income can then
match consumption e.g. a fisherman can complement or substitute his
41
To illustrate, there are fixed seasonal periods for harvesting and fishing in a year. Farmers and fishermen
will carry out most of their activities within this period, bring their produce to market to sell
and then spread out their income for use during the rest of the year. Consumption patterns will
then match with income generating patterns. This pattern of behaviour can be thought of in economic
terminology as ‘consumption smoothing’. If there fails to be a match within a given time
period as determined by the household e.g. a calendar year, a harvesting cycle etc., this is
because of the occurrence of an exogenous shock such as a natural disaster, a single event or
repeated events of conflict.
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