Livelihood diversification and occupation These community-defined livelihood categories were used as a template for
revealing occupational diversity. The very poor (constituting between 5% and 25% of the communities’populations) were by-and-large identified as unable to diversify their livelihoods, often lacking the means to engage in any form of income generating activity aside from begging and farm laboring. In contrast, the‘poor’and‘average’groupings (together onstituting between 70% and 90% of the populations) were classified as being engaged in the widest range of income generating activities across the sectors of small-scale service enterprises (such as the sale of alcohol and cooked
food), cottage industries and crafts (such as brickmaking, carpentry and construction), fish trading, farm laboring and the production and sale of crops and livestock. In contrast, those with the highest standard of living (between 2% and 8% of the populations) were classified as being engaged in a narrower range of occupations predominantly crop and livestock production and sales, followed by service-based enterprises (such as lodging houses, restaurants and bars) and crop trading. The implications of these findings in terms of livelihood diversification are several. Occupational specialization appears to be both a product of poverty (the very poor being unable to access sufficient resources to engage in other, potentially more profitable activities), and of choice, with those maintaining the strongest livelihood base doing so through concentration on one or two main activities, predominantly agriculturally-related. In between these extremes lies the most diverse group, actively engaging in numerous occupations in order to gain much-needed income to supplement predominantly subsistence crop production, and in many cases with aspirations to pursue more singularly profitable enterprises