Coal Miners' Livelihood Vulnerability To Economic Shock: Multi-criteria Assessment And Reduction Strategies

The expanding scale of coal mining and the rapid development of coal industry has created a large number of jobs.At present,in terms of number of employees,the coal industry has ranked first in China's category of 41 industries.However,because of many reasons associated with coal workers,such as their single social relationships,strong professional technology,low levels of education,emotional moods,and so on,the coal workers' livelihood vulnerability problem is serious.Under the fluctuation of external economy,such as the slump of coal price,the original livelihood balance of miners has been greatly damaged,which is easy to cause serious poverty and even bring about a major impact on the social stability in coal-mining cities.Therefore,there is an urgent need for relevant research on how to reduce the livelihood risks of miners,enhance their livelihood capacity and reduce their livelihood vulnerability in order to achieve sustainable livelihood.However,the existing research on livelihood vulnerability assessment mainly focuses on the impact of external risks such as climate change,ecological degradation and endemic diseases on farmers and herdsmen in ecologically fragile areas of developing countries.The problem of the livelihood vulnerability of coal miners under conditions of economic fluctuation has not been paid sufficient attention.Quantitative research on the strategy of reducing the livelihood vulnerability of miners is even scantier.In view of this,based on the definition of the concept of livelihood vulnerability,this study clarifies the response mechanism of miners' livelihood vulnerability to economic shock,and then uses the rough set-technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution-rank-sum ratio(RS-TOPSIS-RSR)methodology and construct a composite coal miners' livelihood vulnerability index(CMLVI)to assess coal workers' livelihood vulnerability in 33 coal-mining cities.In order to identify the causes of livelihood vulnerability more effectively in each region,this study decompose the overall dimensions into multiple dimensions and calculates a sensitivity index(SEI),resilience index(RI),and stability index(STI)to represent the degrees of the sensitivity of habitat conditions,the resilience of society,and the stability of individuals respectively.On this basis,this study makes a meaningful discussion on the vulnerability reduction strategy.According to the results of the livelihood vulnerability assessment,and the regional economic development level and other factors,Ordos is selected as the research object and a system dynamics model about livelihood vulnerability is constructed.This model includes four subsystems,i.e.,coal industry,other industries,social support and miner individuals.Then the external disturbance scenario and the reduction strategy scenario are designed and simulated to find out the impact of different scenarios on the livelihood vulnerability of miners.Moreover,the cumulative effect of each external disturbance and reduction strategy is analyzed,and the implementation effect of each strategy is discussed from both short-term and longterm perspectives.Finally,based on the above research results,combined with the particularity of the livelihood status of coal miners,this study explores effective ways to reduce the vulnerability with the core of raising the livelihood capital,and puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions to reduce the livelihood vulnerability of miners under economic fluctuation.The research conclusions are as follows:In terms of livelihood vulnerability assessment:(1)from the time dimension perspective,the livelihood vulnerability of miners in cities varies with time,even the same cities have different degrees in each of the four years.Among them,the livelihood vulnerability of Panzhihua,Xianyang,Pingdingshan and Sanmenxia decreased year by year,while the vulnerability of Shuangyashan,Yangquan and Datong gradually increased.(2)From the horizontal perspective,the CMLVI scores maintain a low level in Xuzhou,Huaibei,Taian,Jining,Zaozhuang and Zhengzhou.While Qujing and Yangquan always get high CMLVI scores.According to the geographical distribution analysis,the livelihood vulnerability of miners in the relatively developed middle and east part of china is significantly lower than that in China's underdeveloped western and northeast regions.(3)Through the analysis of SEI,RI and STI,cities with the same level of livelihood vulnerability may have different vulnerability patterns and even low vulnerability cities may have high vulnerability in some dimensions and face serious problems that need to be addressed urgently.In terms of vulnerability reduction strategy:(1)from 2007 to 2017,coal miners' livelihood vulnerability in Ordos fluctuated,with degrees of livelihood vulnerability that first decrease,then increase and finally decrease,and the overall level of vulnerability is relatively high.In addition,miners' livelihood vulnerability is negatively related to the coal price,indicating that the coal price slump will have a significant negative effect on miners' livelihood.(2)Although the coal price slump and coal de-capacity can have benefit on the optimization of regional industrial structure and capital structure,but they all have a significant negative impact on miners' livelihood,and this impact will gradually deepen over time.In addition,compared with coal de-capacity,the coal price slump has a greater negative impact,and it lead the livelihood vulnerability increases year by year.(3)The overall and cumulative effects of different reduction strategies exist obvious differences.Compared with reducing enterprise tax rate and fees,developing living service industry,enhancing financial service level and improving technology and education level have a more marked effect on reducing livelihood vulnerability;reducing enterprise tax rate can quickly reduce vulnerability in a short time,but its effectiveness is declining,while the cumulative effect of other strategies is increasing.(4)Different strategies have different influence paths on miners' livelihood,and that is the main reason for the differences in the effects of the above strategies.