The Pu Peo economy is based mainly on slash and burn agriculture and terraced fields, sown with maize, rice, rye, and beans. Farm implements include ploughs and harrows and buffaloes and oxen serve as draught animals. The staple food in daily meals is steam-cooked corn flour. The attire of Pu Peo women reflects their cultural identity manifested in their hairstyle, scarves, jupes and aprons: pieces of cloth of different colours are sewn together to make colourful designs. Men dress like other ethnic groups in the region.

Houses are built on the ground in tiny clusters near Hoa and Mong settlements. Each family lineage has its own system of middle names given to successive generations. Young men and women of various lineages enter into marriage according to matrimonial custom. If a young man of lineage A marries a young woman of lineage B, then the young B men are not allowed to marry into A. Many people of other ethnic groups have become daughters-in-law or sons-in-law of Pu Peo families. The groom's family seeks marriage for him and, after the wedding party, the bride joins the family of her husband. The Pu Peo family follows the patrilineal system, and the father or husband is the house owner.

Funeral rites comprise the burial ceremony and offerings. The Pu Peo attach great importance to ancestral worship. On the altar are often placed small earthen jars, each jar symbolising a generation. Besides wedding parties and funerals, the Pu Peo hold ceremonies to pray for peace and the opening of the new working season at the New Year in the first half of the first lunar month. They observe the fifth of the fifth lunar month festival.

The Pu Peo are one of the few ethnic groups who still use bronze drums, but not as widely as in the past and now only at rituals. In Pu Peo customs, there are male and female drum sets in pairs.

Although the Pu Peo are not large in population, they constantly join other ethnic groups in national building and defence and in strengthening the security of the national frontier.