Household Economy Analysis for Geographical Targeting

Targeting development interventions to areas where households need them most. Information to generate a Household Livelihoods Protection Score (HLPS) is found in a standard Household Economy Baseline. The HLPS tells us how much more or less, in relation to a minimum amount required to sustain a local livelihood, households generated in the reference year. One thing repeated analyses highlights is that the people with the highest cash incomes are not always those with the highest HLPS. This is because higher cash incomes are often associated with a livelihood system that costs more to maintain. Development interventions are not always targeted at the areas that need them most. If our objective is to help the people most vulnerable to shocks, we should start by identifying where these people are found. FEG has developed a measure of such vulnerability based on livelihood security, one that doesn’t just look at cash income, but compares the total income of households in the reference year (both food and cash income) to what people need in order to secure their livelihoods (the Livelihoods Protection Threshold or LPT*).