Analysing livelihood outcomes

For example, during the course of the livelihoods analysis conducted with poor people, it might become evident that they do not make use of public rural health centres. The reasons given by respondents may be that doctors are rarely present at the health centres and medicines are often lacking. This could be having several impacts, or results, on the livelihoods of the poor – they might be spending more on health care because they have to rely on private practitioners, or their health standards might be suffering as they forego treatment, with consequences for their ability to earn a living and support their families. The function of an analysis of results is to understand what specific aspects of the institutions involved are involved in producing these different results for poor people and their livelihoods. The livelihood outcomes identified during the livelihoods analysis can be thought of as the final results that people are able to achieve, given the assets they can access and make use of, the support they receive from service providers and enabling agencies, and the extent to which they are able to deal with vulnerability. Once these livelihood outcomes are clearly defined, those carrying out an institutional analysis need to identify the specific results of institutional systems that contribute to those outcomes. These institutional results can be divided into two main “types”; delivery results and governance results. These two types of results are explained in more detail below.