Livelihood Coping Strategies – Essential Needs (LCS-EN)

Outcome

Impact

% of households applying Livelihood Coping Strategies (LCS) to meet essential needs, by severity (no coping, stress, crisis, emergency)

The Livelihood Coping Strategies for Essential Needs (LCS-EN) indicator measures how households cope with challenges related to meeting essential needs, such as food, health, shelter and other basic services. It does this by asking whether households used specific coping strategies in the past 30 days or have exhausted them within the last 12 months due to insufficient resources. Reported strategies are grouped into stress, crisis, and emergency levels to indicate how damaging and hard-to-reverse the coping is for future wellbeing and productivity. Overall, LCS-EN provides a snapshot of households’ capacity to manage and recover from shocks like conflict, displacement, climate events, or economic crises.

Determine the indicator's value by using the following methodology:

 

1) Identify Relevant Livelihood Coping Strategies: Begin by selecting the most common livelihood coping strategies related to essential needs used by households in the target area within the reference period. These strategies measure how households meet essential survival needs. Contact the Cash Working Group (or possibly other major actors, such as ICRC or respected NGOs) to see if a list of locally relevant livelihood coping strategies is available. If so, review it to ensure the strategies are relevant to the context of your intervention. If such a list is unavailable, use focus group discussions with target group members to identify them.

Examples of livelihood coping strategies are included in the documents listed below.

 

2) Determine Severity Weights for Each Coping Strategy: Assign a severity weight to each livelihood coping strategy that reflects its negative impact on household wellbeing. WFP recommends categorising coping strategies into three severity levels—Stress (weight = 1), Crisis (weight = 2), and Emergency (weight = 3)—based on how much they undermine livelihoods and essential needs. When available, use severity classifications from the WFP or Cash Working Group guidance to ensure standardisation and comparability. If no standard exists, conduct focus group discussions with community members and stakeholders to agree on appropriate weighting.

 

3) Conduct a Household Survey Using Standardised Questionnaire: Interview a representative sample of households to ask whether they used each coping strategy in the specified recall period. Responses should include:

   - Yes (used within the 30-day recall period)

   - No, not necessary

   - No, exhausted (already sold assets or could not continue practice within the last 12 months)

   - Not applicable (don’t have access to this strategy)

Additionally, for sensitive strategies such as begging, also include the option “Prefer not to answer."

 

4) Calculate the Livelihood Coping Strategies for Essential Needs Score using the following steps:

• First, group the coping strategies based on the severity levels: stress, crisis, and emergency. If more than the required number of strategies were used in the survey, then 1) look at how often each strategy was used, and 2) within each severity group, keep the most prevalent strategies only until you have 4 stress, 3 crisis, 3 and emergency strategies.

• Next, create binary variables for each severity level: A household is classified under a severity category only if it actually relied on the strategy (i.e. the answer is "Yes") or exhausted at least one coping strategy (i.e. the answer is "No, exhausted"). The option "exhausted" is included because it shows that the household already relied on that option recently and has no capacity left there.

• Then, classify each household into no coping, stress, crisis, or emergency category based on the highest-severity coping strategy they used (or had already exhausted). In practice, this means: if they used at least one emergency strategy, classify them as Emergency; if not, but they used at least one crisis strategy, classify them as Crisis; if not, but they used at least one stress strategy, classify them as Stress; and if none of these were used, classify them as No coping. This way, every household is counted only once, at the most serious level of livelihood coping they relied on.

5) To determine the indicator’s value, calculate the percentage of households in each coping severity category (no coping, stress, crisis, emergency):

   - For each category, count the number of households classified in that category.

   - Divide this count by the total number of surveyed households.

   - Multiply by 100 to express the result as a percentage.

Disaggregate the data by gender of the head of household, geographical area, population area, wealth and other relevant criteria, provided the sample size is sufficient to ensure reliable representation.

1) The reliance on stress strategies indicates a reduced ability to deal with future shocks due to a current reduction in resources or increase in debts. Crisis strategies directly reduce future productivity, including human capital formation. Emergency strategies affect future productivity but are extremely difficult to reverse or more dramatic in nature.

2) Consider reporting additional findings, such as the proportion of households reporting "exhausted" coping strategies, which indicates depleted livelihood assets or options.

 

3) Consider continuous re-assessment of “Not applicable” responses against each of the strategies. High prevalence may indicate that the selected strategies for the module are not relevant or that a majority of households have already exhausted the strategies years earlier – which no longer fall within the exhausted recall period (12 months).

4) The LCS-EN methodology requires contextual adaptation, but must maintain comparability with WFP standard severity weights and classification thresholds. Always consult the recommendations provided by relevant coordination groups (e.g., a Cash Working Group) who should lead this process locally.

 

5) Ensure consistent recall period for coping strategies (30 days for “Yes” and 12 months for “Exhausted”) to ensure data comparability.

 

6) The Livelihood Coping Strategies indicator exists in two versions: For essential needs (covered on this page) and for food security (described here). The version for essential needs should be used in Essential Needs Analysis, or whenever the context is broader than food security. The Food Security version should be used when a narrow focus on food security is intended.

 

7) Refer to the full WFP LCS-EN guidance and supporting documents for detailed definitions, example questionnaires, and analysis scripts (see below).