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Livelihood Coping Strategies – Essential Needs (LCS-EN)

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The Livelihood Coping Strategies – Essential Needs (LCS-EN) indicator measures the severity with which households are coping with challenges in meeting their basic needs. 

Households are asked whether they engaged in specific harmful coping strategies in the past 30 days or exhausted them in the past 12 months due to a lack of resources to meet their basic needs. These strategies are categorised by severity - stress, crisis, and emergency - based on their long-term impact on household well-being and productivity.

This indicator reflects a household’s capacity to manage and recover from shocks such as conflict, displacement, climate events, or economic crises. It is a core outcome indicator within the UNHCR–WFP Joint Analytical Framework.

For detailed technical guidance, data collection tools, and scripts to calculate the LCS-EN indicator, please refer to the WFP VAM Resource Centre LCS-EN page, which provides:

  • Technical guidance notes
  • Lists of coping strategies and definitions (English, French, Spanish; Arabic coming soon)
  • Questionnaire modules and XLS forms (generic, rural, and urban versions)
  • Qualitative tools for focus group discussions
  • Training presentations
  • Calculation scripts (SPSS, STATA, R) and sample data