Contemporary debates on the rural sector in Latin America have led many to question the future viability of peasant livelihoods in the Andes. The paper first discusses certain limitations in these discussions of peasant viability. Firstly, they conflate agrarian with rural livelihoods, thus deflecting attention from the myriad transitions that have occurred in the ways through which people make a living and the diverse assets they draw upon in the process. Secondly, they imply that rural people assess livelihood options according to income criteria, whereas ethnographic and sociological evidence suggests that other criteria are equally meaningful to rural people, in particular the maintenance of cultural and social practices that accompany rural residence. Thirdly, they suggest an impermeable barrier dividing viable and non-viable units. Yet a review of recent livelihood transitions in the region suggests that this barrier is indeed permeable, particular if we phrase the issue as one of rural, and not only agrarian, livelihoods. On the basis of these observations, the paper develops an analytical framework for analysing rural livelihoods in terms of their sustainability and their implications for rural poverty. The framework argues that our analyses of rural livelihoods need to understand them in terms of: people