The Status of Family Resilience: Effects of Sustainable Livelihoods in Rural China
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The Status of Family Resilience: Effects of Sustainable Livelihoods in Rural China Bo Yang1 · Marcus W. Feldman2 · Shuzhuo Li3 Accepted: 10 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Family resilience is the capacity of a family to mitigate adversity using its resources, structure, and internal connections. In rural China, where sustainable livelihoods are changing rapidly because of urbanization and migration, it is not clear how family resilience interacts with sustainability of livelihoods. This study of rural Chinese families classifies individual’s perceived family resilience and discusses how sustainable livelihoods influence this classification. A multilevel survey of rural families reveals three categories of perceived resilience in families: perceived optimistic families, perceived cooperative families, and perceived pessimistic families. Sustainable livelihoods, including natural, social, financial, and human capitals, have significant impacts on this classification of perceived family resilience. We conclude that rural families in China vary in their levels of family resilience, and the more physical and financial capital they have, the more internal cooperation there is within families. The more natural and traditional social capital families have, the less internal cooperation there is within families. The more human resources families have, the more resilience they have. Keywords Family resilience · Rural families · Sustainable livelihood · China
1 Introduction Family resilience is the capacity of a family to survive under adversity as a function of family resources, family structure, and within-family connections (Walsh 2003). Families that experience the risk of natural disasters use resilience to acquire necessary resources, adapt to changes, and therefore operate sustainably (Gallopín et al. 2006). Family resilience also includes the family’s ability to deal with social challenges. In China, families are confronted with rapid social and economic change during which they need more resilience to acquire resources and survive. The first change is that the Chinese traditional family, where * Marcus W. Feldman [email protected] 1
International Business School, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China
2
Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
3
Institute for Population and Development, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
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more than two generations live together, has become smaller after 40 years of the national family planning strategy. In 2017, 67.6% of families had only three or fewer members, indicating that China’s traditional pattern of large families, with concentrated residence and coordinated resistance against the risk of adversity, has changed (Yang and Mukhopadhaya 2017). Another change is that family members have become more financially independent over the past 40 years of economic reform. Compared to couples who are used to living under a planned economy, with urbanization and marketizat
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