Microenterprise Resilience after Household Income Shocks: An Integrative Literature Review of Entrepreneurship, Social Protection, and Sustainable Livelihoods

Household income shocks, including the death of a breadwinner, job loss, illness, disasters, and economic crises, can severely disrupt household assets, roles, consumption patterns, and livelihood strategies, particularly among vulnerable and female-headed households. In such contexts, microenterprise often emerges as a flexible pathway for income recovery, yet its contribution to sustainable livelihoods remains conceptually fragmented across entrepreneurship, social protection, and livelihood studies. This article presents an integrative literature review that synthesizes recent evidence on household vulnerability, necessity entrepreneurship, social protection, entrepreneurial resources, innovation, bricolage, social support, and sustainable livelihood outcomes. The review develops an integrative framework that positions social protection as both a shock buffer and a productive resource, while entrepreneurial activation, innovation, and support systems function as conversion mechanisms that transform post-shock resources into microenterprise survival, recovery, adaptation, and transformation. The article contributes to the literature by reframing microenterprise resilience as a household-level livelihood recovery process rather than merely a firm-level survival outcome. It further proposes a typology of post-shock microenterprise resilience and advances a future research agenda on gendered post-shock entrepreneurship, productive social protection, and sustainable livelihood resilience. The findings highlight the need for integrated recovery approaches that connect social protection, microenterprise development, mentoring, innovation support, and institutional ecosystems to help vulnerable households move from temporary survival toward sustainable livelihood security.