Measuring Household Livelihood Security at the Family and Community Level in the Developing World

This paper highlights one of the recent attempts to measure progress at the family and community level—the household livelihood security approach. The objective of this approach and an experimental household livelihood security index is not national or even large-scale subnational crosscomparison. Instead, it is a participatory, rapid community assessment technique that helps to identify the constraints to peoples' well-being. Its use is to help communities and their partners develop a profile of these constraints and to discuss and design effective programs to overcome the barriers to better health, nutrition, housing, education, and livelihood security. This paper addresses the following themes: (a) introduction, (b) a brief progress measurement history, (c) the household livelihood security approach, (d) the household livelihood security index, (e) how the index is used, (f) future issues, problems and prospects, and (g) conclusions.