Abstract
Based on livelihood approach and using household survey data, this study mainly focuses on the assessment of factors affecting the income of households in the Coastal Sandy Area of Thua Thien Hue Province. Findings indicated that besides the assets, the livelihood strategies significantly contributed to considerable differences of the household income between household groups and among study sites. Although agriculture–based strategy is one of the most popular among livelihood strategies, there are considerable differences. Thanks to more specialization on livestock, non-farm business - aquaculture, the better-off category, has higher income. By contrast, due to more dependence on food crop, wage work and migration, income of the poor is lower. These findings implicate that in order to improve the poor's income, the government should introduce the policy to raise the poor’s capacity and their accessibility so that they could diversify their income sources, especially livestock and non-farm income. In practice, the support policies introduced by the government have positively influenced household income, but these general policies cannot meet the development needs from various locations as well as different household categories because there is marked difference in livelihood assets, human source, landholding, financial and social capitals.
Keywords: household, livelihood, assets, income