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This study explores the relationship between remittances received, education expenditure, energy use, income, poverty, and economic growth for a panel of the nine selected remittance-receiving countries (Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Philippines). World Development Indicator database is used for retrieving data from the period of 1990 to 2014. Panel cointegration technique is used to test the long-run relationship among studied variables. Furthermore, the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model is applied to confirm the presence of a long-run and short-run relationship. The findings of the ARDL model indicate that remittances received positively influence economic growth, and there is a significant relationship between remittances received and economic growth during the long-run. Education expenditure, energy use, and income also positively and significantly impact economic growth during the long-run. In contrast, final household consumption used in this study as a proxy of poverty showed a significant negative effect on economic growth during the long-run, which indicates that increasing poverty will reduce economic growth; on the other hand, reducing poverty will boost economic growth in the selected countries during the long-run.

This paper examines the child development outcomes of two cohorts of children who were exposed to the same intervention at different points in time. One cohort was eligible to access playgroups during the first year of a five-year project cycle, beginning at age four. The other cohort became eligible to access these services during the third year of a five-year project cycle, beginning at age three. The younger cohort was more likely to be exposed to playgroups for longer and at more age-appropriate times relative to the older cohort. The paper finds that enrollment rates and enrollment duration in preprimary education increased for both cohorts, but the enrollment effects were larger for the younger cohort. In terms of child development outcomes, there were short-term effects at age five that did not last until age eight, for both cohorts. Moreover, the younger cohort had substantially higher test scores during the early grades of primary school, relative to the older cohort. We document the extent to which program impacts can vary as a result of differences in project implementation.

Since Indonesia's transition to democracy in 1998, wealth inequality has increased significantly with a dramatic rise in the wealth of the rich and stagnating income growth among poorer citizens. Similar to many developing countries, the issue of child workers in Indonesia is a critical problem. The "2015 National Labour Force Survey" recorded 1.65 million children aged 15-17 involved in child work in Indonesia. Efforts to encourage the participation of child workers in schooling has been greatly promoted but few studies have investigated the issue of the impact of child work on student learning outcomes. Children involved in work are likely to be left behind in educational achievement. Their disadvantaged social, cultural, and economic backgrounds lead to physical and psychosocial vulnerabilities, which requires democratic-classroom approaches, characterized by child-centred settings and teachers familiar with students' diverse learning abilities. This paper presents findings from a study investigating Indonesian teachers' perspectives on the impacts of work on student learning outcomes and how they implement diverse teaching and learning styles when educating child workers. This study highlighted the lack of school and teacher readiness in managing child workers' diverse needs and the absence of teachers' involvement in developing policies for child worker education that may all lead to child workers not achieving learning outcomes. This study outcomes also support democratic-style classroom approaches in making education a reliable investment for child workers. This study provides recommendations for improved policies and practices for the local government and schools in the East Nusa Tenggara province.

The primary purpose of this paper is to review and evaluate the causes of educational poverty in less developed countries. The basic intent in carrying out such a study is to define and derive the role of governing agencies in deliberately creating educational poverty in the country, so that the private interest of the rich and powerful ruling class can be fully safeguarded. This study is of crucial interest to the common man because majority of the people living in less developed countries are poor in spite of the fact, that almost all these countries own ample human and material resources. However, the common man in these countries is continuously suffering, generation after generation, and has been denied access to basic amenities of life. The rich and powerful ruling class, in majority of the less developed countries, has intentionally denied basic education facilities to its people for keeping them ignorant and unaware of their fundamental rights to share national resources and to gain competence for comfortable living in the society. The paper advocates a complete reversal in economic growth policies of the less developed countries so that top priority is given to those projects and programs that directly benefit the common man in the society. In this respect, the author calls for awareness among the people to exercise their economic and social rights so that people of all the strata can share equally the fruits of growth and prosperity.

This paper examines the unsettling stories of poverty from rural Indonesia in two films, Siti (2014) and Turah (2016). The concept of structural poverty enables a thorough analysis of these films' depictions of poverty and the main characters' reactions to the poverty they experience. This paper also employs the concept of gendered poverty to highlight how gender injustice perpetuates the poverty of women, as depicted in the films. Both structural and gendered poverty are propagated by the interpellation of ideological state apparatuses. This paper argues that the poverty of the rural people depicted in both films results from structural engineering by the elite, not from natural or inevitable conditions. This poverty is further intensified by the patriarchal culture of rural communities, which perpetuates gender inequality and results in deeper poverty for women. Every woman in these two films seems to have accepted, or at least resigned herself to, the patriarchal system and the gendered poverty it produces. The sole exception is Siti, who struggles against the double burden of being both housewife and breadwinner, resisting the naturalization of poverty and thereby revealing the role that ideological state apparatuses play in perpetuating oppression in society writ large as well as in individuals' minds and souls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the spatial heterogeneity in the human capital potential of Indonesia's next generation by constructing and analyzing sub-national human capital indices (HCI) for 34 provinces and 514 districts in Indonesia. The paper identifies data and methodological constraints in the construction of these sub-national indices and proposes and implements strategies to overcome these challenges. Several interesting findings emerge from the analysis. First, Indonesian's young generation can only achieve 53% of their future productivity relative to the full benchmark of health and education. Second, the variation in aggregate human capital potential across space in Indonesia is staggering: some parts of country are almost at par with countries like Vietnam and China while others have human capital levels that are comparable to Chad, Niger, and Sierra Leone. Third, differences in learning outcomes as measured by harmonized test scores account for the largest share of the variation in human capital across Indonesia, suggesting that the challenge of providing quality education remains one of the most important obstacles to equalizing opportunities for the next generation of Indonesians. And fourth, the correlation between government spending and performance on HCI at the district level appears rather weak, reinforcing conclusions reached by other recent studies that have highlighted the importance of focusing on the quality of spending. Finally, this paper also shows that Indonesia's human capital registered a modest improvement from 0.50 in 2013 to 0.53 in 2018 with stronger progress observed among the already top performing provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law Number 21 of 2007 concerning the Criminal Act of Human Trafficking has been enacted in Indonesia. Nevertheless, the government of this country cannot independently eradicate human trafficking and requires collaboration with other countries, given the organized nature of this criminal act, where one country may function as the sender, and another as the recipient. This paper employs a normative juridical method that prioritizes literature review, emphasizing legal regulations and literature pertaining to the crime of human trafficking. The occurrence of human trafficking is not solely attributed to the weakness in law enforcement but is also influenced by factors such as poverty, patriarchal culture, and economic incentives. Law enforcement in Indonesia cannot operate independently but requires cooperation with other countries, considering Indonesia's geographically strategic position as both a transit hub and a source of human trafficking. This collaboration is crucial in the processes of apprehension, extradition, and prosecution of individuals involved in human trafficking, making a significant contribution to the efforts to eradicate this crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smoke from massive wildfires blanketed Indonesia in late 1997. This paper examines the impact that this air pollution (particulate matter) had on fetal, infant, and child mortality. Exploiting the sharp timing and spatial patterns of the pollution and inferring deaths from "missing children" in the 2000 Indonesian Census, I find that the pollution led to 15,600 missing children in Indonesia (1.2 percent of the affected birth cohorts). Prenatal exposure to pollution drives the result. The effect size is much larger in poorer areas, suggesting that differential effects of pollution contribute to the socioeconomic gradient in health. (Contains 10 tables, 4 figures and 26 footnotes.)

Rural residents account for the bulk of poverty in developing countries. This paper evaluates the impact of Indonesia's Dana Desa program (Village Fund Program or VFP) on rural poverty and female labour force participation. The VFP, introduced in 2014, was an ambitious national-level village governance program which transferred administrative responsibility and financial resources to Indonesia's 79,000 plus rural villages, providing them with the autonomy to invest in rural infrastructure, human capital, and job creation programs. Using nationally representative data from before and after the program, we show that the implementation of the VFP was associated with an improvement in rural household's consumption expenditure among households, particularly among agricultural households. Female labour force participation in rural areas increased by about 10 percentage points and there is also evidence of a sectoral shift away from agricultural employment towards jobs in the service sector. This improvement in labour force participation is associated with poverty reduction among rural households., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Rammohan, Tohari. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The relationship between income distribution inequality and inflation is widely discussed in economics. The different concepts of macroeconomic management in various countries have different implications for each country. This paper aims to examine the relationship between inequality in income distribution and inflation. Panel ARDL with semi-annual data from 33 provinces in Indonesia for the period of 2012-2018 is used in this model. The results show that changes in poverty and economic growth are not statistically significant in affecting the changes of income disparity in short run. Inflation is too low, thus it is less effective at encouraging income inequality in Indonesia. In addition, in the long run, inflation does not affect the inequality of income distribution, it is assumed that the benefits of inflation are concentrated in groups of people with high income levels. Moreover, economic growth has negative impact on income inequality and poverty that eventually will aggravate the imbalance in income distribution. Therefore, its is recommended for Indonesia's economy to be directed at increasing inflation to reach the ideal level in order to be able to reduce the imbalance in income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia's efforts to improve its qualitative and quantitative participation in community health activities are discussed. Student and faculty problems in the community health program at Udayana University Medical School in Bali are cited. Knowledge gained from Indonesian programs should be examined by American medical educators for use in American schools. (Author/MSE)

The inability of macroeconomists to anticipate the Global Financial Crisis or reproduce it in their models has led to an important stock-taking of deficiencies in, and necessary modifications to, theories and models used pervasively by researchers and taught to graduate students. This stock-taking—the so-called "Rebuilding Macroeconomic Theory Project," organized by David Vines and Samuel Wills—has provided an opportunity for economy-wide modelers (who include regional scientists) to consider whether the theories and models they employ are adequate and appropriate to the tasks to which they put them. In this paper I provide a brief report on the project, retrace the development of macroeconomics, and summarize responses by prominent macroeconomists to a set of questions posed by organizers of the project, while drawing implications of these questions and responses for regional science. I then offer original suggestions from a regional scientist's perspective on what is missing from the "benchmark" macro-model, how financial frictions can be introduced, how behavioral foundations might be modified, how heterogeneity of agents might be captured, and what new stylized facts need to be explained. I proceed to illustrate how several of the suggested changes can be integrated in economy-wide models by drawing on a study of the impacts of monetary policy on consumption by different income groups in Indonesia. I close the paper by posing a number of "big-picture questions" on the implications of the RMTP for economy-wide modelers and regional scientists to ponder and by offering a brief reflection and aspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While urbanization has great potential to facilitate poverty reduction, climate shocks represent a looming threat to such upward mobility. This paper empirically analyzes the effects of climatic risks on the function of urban agglomerations to support poor households' escape from poverty. Combining household surveys with climatic datasets, our analyses of Chile, Colombia, and Indonesia find that households in large metropolitan areas are more likely to escape from poverty, indicating better access to economic opportunities in those areas. However, climate shocks such as extreme rainfalls and high flood risks significantly reduce upward mobility, thus offsetting such benefits of urban agglomerations. The findings underscore the need to enhance resilience among the urban poor to allow them to fully utilize the benefits of urban agglomerations.

Financial inclusion is a policy priority in both developed and developing countries. Yet almost one in four people remain financially excluded around the globe, with the vast majority living in the developing world. In this paper, we argue that financial resilience: an individual's ability to function effectively in adverse financial situations, can better help us assist people to cope with financial adversity, develop effective policy and, ultimately, improve economic development. This paper builds on an existing financial resilience measurement framework and adapts it to develop a measure appropriate to the context of developing countries. Indonesia, where one in three people are financially excluded, is used as a case country from which to draw conclusions. We use the Indonesia Family Life Survey and put forward the country's first snapshot of financial resilience. Implications for research and policy are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have witnessed the globalisation of policies promoting social cash transfers as a critical instrument for poverty reduction. Among various approaches, the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) model promoted by the World Bank has gained discursive dominance in countries where this strategy, and its technical model for implementation, appear more attractive than competing alternatives. While research has evaluated CCT programmes and considered the politics of development that they represent in Latin America, researchers are yet to explore the constitutive effects of CCT ways of knowing and measuring poverty in the societies of rural Asia. This paper explores the consequences of CCT knowledge politics in rural Indonesia. It argues that CCT practices of knowing and measuring have paradoxical effects. The programme makes direct payments to millions of impoverished households, producing well-documented patterns of inclusion and advancement. Yet, CCT knowledge practices involve simplifications and generate significant mis-targeting, eliciting a never-ending repair process among state actors, local leaders, and communities. This metricised knowledge system depoliticises political questions of distribution. It conceals alternative ways of knowing and addressing poverty, producing an order of entitlements somewhat at odds with established community logics of inclusion, while provoking a local politics of distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The making of populism in Surakarta city had almost been a tale. Mayor Jokowi was supposedly a humble, confident and broadened minded leader. Humble, that he was a person who had the willingness to listen to inputs from citizen. Confident, in a sense that he had necessary capacities to decide policies contrasting to others who often trapped in hesitance causing good policies hooked in their drawers. And broadened minded that he was open to new ideas. He was in his time people believed a potential transformative leader in Solo. This paper answers a question Why and how populism in Solo did contribute to some extent to democratic transformation, and what are challenges? It is not prepared to repeat the tale, rather written to provide a critical interpretation that populism is not shaped original from the populist's kitchen, but from power relation dynamics with democracy actors. An interpretative analysis finds that vital part of Mayor Jokowi's programmatic politics resulted from negotiation with CSOs and local fora. Despite CSO's influence, there were two challenges left. They are populism that had gained its champion and some ironies so-called discrepancy and poverty. Connecting the two, this paper argues that alternative actor presence had been influential in democratic space but not strong enough that it could spur to linking populist programmatic politics to a better life for the poor. A space to facilitate democratic actors work together again is about an imperative to make democracy again on the march at Solo city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Paper examines the Indonesian government's new microcredit programme, the Ultra Microcredit (UMi) scheme, designed to provide cheap, hassle-free loans to micro businesses (MBs) owned by the poor and vulnerable. Based on UMi's loan disbursement, the number of participating non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), the number of borrowers and its impact on the borrowers' business performance, this paper shows that the programme has so far been significantly promising in supporting the development of MBs. This study not only highlights the ways in which UMi has addressed various problems that MBs face, but also details the scheme's limitations in achieving its large-scale anti-poverty objectives. The results show that UMi's main policy challenges can be overcome by: first, shifting its distribution away from Jakarta and towards the less prosperous provinces of the country; second, improving business facilitation services; and third, complementing the scheme with other non-financial programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood poverty matters—not only because of the disturbingly high number of children affected, but also because of the deleterious impact on their human flourishing, both now and in the future. Effectively addressing child poverty requires clear identification of the nature and causes of the problem, as well as an understanding of how it is experienced. This paper aims to deepen understanding of child poverty, by drawing on key elements of a capability approach, rights-based approaches, and feminist standpoint theory, and empirical research. It is grounded in the findings of rights-based, participatory research with children aged between 7 and 15 years in Indonesia and in Australia, which cast new light on the dimensions of poverty that are most egregious from a child-driven standpoint. It presents a three-dimensional typology of material, opportunity, and relational poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social protection policies involve distributional politics and practices that pose significant challenges. Focusing on Indonesia, where such policies are rapidly expanding, this paper discusses two programmes most relevant to the poor -- the rice for welfare (Rastra) scheme and the conditional cash transfer (PKH) programme. We elaborate on the tensions between a "layered" approach to social protection (where new institutional arrangements are placed on top of, or alongside existing ones) and a "nested" approach (where community-level distribution principles are located within wider state arrangements). The paper concludes that Indonesia is still looking for a welfare regime that is compatible with its politicaleconomic situation and cultural practices. This study argues that, to improve the "fit" of social protection policies, policymakers will need to take a more polycentric approach, allowing the state-supported targeting logic to accommodate the social ethics and moral concerns of the country's rural poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to analyse the role of zakat in poverty alleviation and income inequality reduction based on the gender of zakat recipients. Design/methodology/approach: This study used the Centre of Islamic Economic and Business Studies (CIBEST) model as a poverty measure and the Gini coefficient and Atkinson index as income inequality measures to analyse 1,300 zakat recipients in five different areas of West Java, Indonesia. Findings: Based on the CIBEST model, zakat distribution programmes have better salutary effects on male-headed households in terms of material (0.215) and absolute (0.037) poverty indices, whereas female-headed households have better performance on the falah (0.438) and spiritual (0.022) poverty indices, with greater changes in these indices in female-headed households. According to the Gini coefficient and Atkinson index, female-headed households have better income distribution one-year after zakat distribution programmes, whereas the male-headed households have better performance in regards to welfare loss. Research limitations/implications: The present study only used the poverty line standard published by the Central Board of Statistics from the Republic of Indonesia to identify respondents who live under the poverty line. Practical implications: This paper can serve as a reference for zakat institutions in the implementation of zakat distribution programmes when the gender of zakat recipients is taken into consideration. Originality/value: Not many studies have analysed the impact of gender in zakat distribution programmes despite gender being one of the most important determinants of poverty and income inequality. This study attempts to determine the economic impact of zakat from the perspective of gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, sustained economic growth in Indonesia has lifted many millions of Indonesians out of poverty. But despite these developments, 28 per cent of the population still live below the official poverty line and many more remain vulnerable to falling into poverty. Coastal and fishing communities represent some of the poorer populations across Indonesia, their livelihoods increasingly threatened by deleterious environmental impacts and overfishing. This paper draws on an analysis of household surveys from two Sama Bajo fishing settlements in coastal Southeast Sulawesi. A predominantly maritime language community, Sama Bajo livelihoods are shaped by seasonal patterns of fishing and marine based harvesting and trading. Using a modified poverty survey instrument, the paper explores comparative patterns of poverty and prosperity in these two communities with a focus on livelihood dynamics, seasonality effects, and the enduring patron‐client relationships that sustain their market‐oriented way of life. Key findings highlight the vulnerability of female headed households given the highly gendered access to fishing success, and the significance of relational co‐dependencies between patron‐client networks that sustain the current patterns of fishing livelihoods. The paper highlights the need for more focussed livelihood research among vulnerable populations in Indonesia and smallholder fishing communities in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper aims to find out a conceptual approach to the social safety net in the Qur'an and some essential values that can be realized as role models in contemporary modern life. This study investigates several significant questions, such as how the Qur'an argues for taking sides with the disadvantaged people, and what instruments are outlined by the Qur'an as the main support for the implementation of social safety nets. These questions are approached contextually and critically by examining primary texts, such as verses of the Qur'an that talk about the topic, to be interpreted thematically contextually. Meanwhile, secondary texts are used as interpretive supports to enrich perspectives in reconstructing and reformulating the idea of a social safety net based on the Qur'anic values. This study concludes; first, even though the Qur'an does not mention explicitly the term social safety net, the teachings of the social safety net are implicitly embodied in the Qur'an. Second, some fundamental instruments in the Qur'an can be realized as supporting systems for social safety nets, such as zakah, kafarat, infaq, sadaqah, qurban, dam and fidyah, fai', and ghanimah. Third, the Qur'anic concept of social safety net engages with five principles, namely expanse and balance, justice and equity, spirituality and productivity, sustainability and empowerment, and dynamic and systematic. Thus, the concept of the social safety net in the Qur'an is a comprehensive approach, not only for the short term but also for the long term, not only consumptive-giving but also productive-empowering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers seeking to target health policies efficiently towards specific population groups need to know which individuals stand to benefit the most from each of these policies. While traditional approaches for subgroup analyses are constrained to only consider a small number of pre-defined subgroups, recently proposed causal machine learning (CML) approaches help explore treatment-effect heterogeneity in a more flexible yet principled way. Causal forests use a generalisation of the random forest algorithm to estimate heterogenous treatment effects both at the individual and the subgroup level. Our paper aims to explore this approach in the setting of health policy evaluation with strong observed confounding, applied specifically to the context of mothers' health insurance enrolment in Indonesia. Comparing two health insurance schemes (subsidised and contributory) against no insurance, we find beneficial average impacts of enrolment in contributory health insurance on maternal health care utilisation and infant mortality, but no impact of subsidised health insurance. The causal forest algorithm identified significant heterogeneity in the impacts of contributory insurance, not just along socioeconomic variables that we pre-specified (indicating higher benefits for poorer, less educated, and rural women), but also according to some other characteristics not foreseen prior to the analysis, suggesting in particular important geographical impact heterogeneity. Our study demonstrates the power of CML approaches to uncover unexpected heterogeneity in policy impacts. The findings from our evaluation of past health insurance expansions can potentially guide the re-design of the eligibility criteria for subsidised health insurance in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen increased interest in the use of alternative data sources in the definition and production of official statistics and indicators for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In this paper, we consider the application of data science to the production of official statistics, illustrating our perspective through the use of poverty targeting as an application. We show that machine learning can play a central role in the generation of official statistics, combining a variety of types of data (survey, administrative and alternative). We focus on the problem of poverty targeting using the Proxy Means Test in Indonesia, comparing a number of existing statistical and machine learning methods, then introducing new approaches in the spirit of small area estimation that utilize area-level features and data augmentation at the subdistrict level to develop more refined models at the district level, evaluating the methods on three districts in Indonesia on the problem of estimating 2020 per capita household expenditure using data from 2016–2019. The best performing method, XGBoost, is able to reduce inclusion/exclusion errors on the problem of identifying the poorest 40% of the population in comparison to the commonly used Ridge Regression method by between 4.5% and 13.9% in the districts studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of poverty reduction, there is a clear tendency for groups or organizations involved in these efforts to continue existing practices or approaches without producing the necessary changes or innovations. We found that the poverty reduction gap occurs when programs or projects that have been carried out together repeatedly fail to deliver the expected results in reducing poverty significantly. Despite the awareness of the need for change through collaboration, they still seem to adhere to old approaches that are familiar, routine, or ineffective. Although the pentahelix model partnership is not an easy solution to difficult societal issues, the public views it as an opportunity and challenge that occasionally frustrates the parties involved and raises public expectations. For practitioners, researchers, and decision-makers, this study identifies trends, possibilities, and problems in the development of a larger pentahelix model network of collaborative knowledge generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Menstrual hygiene management and health is increasingly gaining policy importance in a bid to promote dignity, gender equality and reproductive health. Effective and adequate menstrual hygiene management requires women and girls to have access to their menstrual health materials and products of choice, but also extends into having private, clean and safe spaces for using these materials. The paper provides empirical evidence of the inequality in menstrual hygiene management in Kinshasa (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Rajasthan (India), Indonesia, Nigeria and Uganda using concentration indices and decomposition methods. There is consistent evidence of wealth-related inequality in the conditions of menstrual hygiene management spaces as well as access to sanitary pads across all countries. Wealth, education, the rural-urban divide and infrastructural limitations of the household are major contributors to these inequalities. While wealth is identified as one of the key drivers of unequal access to menstrual hygiene management, other socio-economic, environmental and household factors require urgent policy attention. This specifically includes the lack of safe MHM spaces which threaten the health and dignity of women and girls.

A generous PAYG defined benefit pension system can guarantee retirees to have comfortable life, but the state budget may not be sustainable when the population is ageing. On the other hand, a defined contribution pension system guarantees state budget sustainability, but making retirees' standard of living depends fully on their labour market performance (before retiring). The choice is even more difficult in developing countries with low budgets such as Indonesia. The defined contribution system is even more uncertain in promising old-age financial adequacy as people's income and investment rates are low. This paper uses a simple OLG model to find an optimal solution from the government perspective—how much state budget should be allocated for the PAYG defined benefit system. It concludes that with a small state budget allocation, as part of a PAYG defined contribution system, to supplement a defined contribution system, the government of Indonesia can guarantee that retirees will not live under poverty while maintaining the state budget sustainability. It recommends that Indonesia combine a defined contribution system, to make a sustainable state budget, and a small budget allocation for a defined benefit system, to ensure that there is no old age poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the launch of Indonesia's decentralization reforms in 2001, the country has achieved significant progress in improving the welfare of its citizens-as seen from increasing income per capita and decreasing poverty levels. However, vertical inequality has increased, raising concerns whether inequality between different parts of the country has also grown. Using spatial econometric models with data covering the 2002-19 period, this paper examines whether there has been a convergence or divergence in income per capita, inequality and poverty across local government areas in Indonesia, The findings indicate that there has been a conditional convergence of these development outcomes across local government areas. This means that the levels of income per capita, inequality and poverty across the country's municipalities and regencies will converge, but the gaps will not be completely eliminated due to di#erences in their endowment factors. This conditional convergence occurs across municipalities and across regencies as well as across local government areas in Java and outside Java, but at different rates of convergence. This finding implies that Indonesia needs to maintain its decentralization policy and resist efforts to recentralize revenue sources and responsibilities. In addition, this should be complemented by efforts to assist areas with low income per capita, high inequality and high poverty rates to improve their endowment factors and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of the financial performance of local governments to the level of welfare in 25 city/regency in South Sulawesi during 2009–2014. Design/methodology/approach: The financial performance is measured by the rate of local autonomy, the effectiveness of local own-source revenue, budget harmony and budget absorption, while the welfare society measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), unemployment and poverty level. Findings: The regression analysis showed that the performance of region autonomy proved to increase the HDI over the next year and to reduce the poverty rate in two and three years ahead, however, has no correlation with the unemployment. The effectiveness of local own-source revenue can lower unemployment at two and three years ahead but failed to increase the HDI and to reduce poverty. Harmony of spending also neglected to raise the HDI and to reduce the level of unemployment although it can alleviate poverty. The level of budget absorption can improve HDI and reduce the unemployment at two and three years ahead, but failed to lower poverty. Expenditure harmony and budget absorption failed to moderate the relationship between local autonomy, the effectiveness of local own-source revenue and all measurement of welfare, while the expenditure harmony able to moderate the relationship between the effectiveness of local own-source revenue and HDI. Originality/value: To the best of authors' knowledge, no previous study has comprehensively studied the effects of level of regionality autonomy and effectivity of local own-source revenue to public welfare, and the moderation effect of Expenditure harmony, budget absorption in relationship between financial performance of local government to public welfare, especially in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an experiment in 640 Indonesian villages on three approaches to target the poor: proxy means tests (PMT), where assets are used to predict consumption; community targeting, where villagers rank everyone from richest to poorest; and a hybrid. Defining poverty based on PPP$2 per capita consumption, community targeting and the hybrid perform somewhat worse in identifying the poor than PMT, though not by enough to significantly affect poverty outcomes for a typical program. Elite capture does not explain these results. Instead, communities appear to apply a different concept of poverty. Consistent with this finding, community targeting results in higher satisfaction. (JEL C93, I32, I38, O12, O15, O18, R23) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines why illegal fees persist at public health facilities in Indonesia. It suggests that their persistence reflects the political dominance of a coalition of interests consisting of politico-bureaucratic elements in the state apparatus and major business groups and the implications this has had for government spending on the health sector and programmes aimedat providing free health care to the poor in particular among other determinants of the level of illegal fees. Accordingly, the paper concludes that eliminating illegal fees from Indonesia's public health system requires not simply better funding of public health facilities and better change management, as much of the comparative health economics literature suggests – although these are certainly part of the solution – but also efforts to empower the poor and their allies vis-à-vis this coalition of interests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Indonesia's long-run 'pro-poor growth' record is among the best in Asia. It shows that appropriate policies can free societies from poverty's worst manifestations in a generation, a crucial message as democracy begins to influence the policy process. This paper places Indonesia's record in regional perspective, analysing determinants of income distribution in Asia and connecting this analysis to Indonesia's pro-poor growth process and the policy mechanisms that encourage pro-poor growth. Using a data set for eight Asian countries, it examines patterns of change in incomes and distribution across countries and over time. Building on Indonesian experience, the paper presents a pro-poor growth model encompassing three levels: improving the 'capabilities' of the poor, lowering transactions costs in the economy, especially between rural and urban areas, and increasing demand for goods and services produced by the poor. It finds that rapid pro-poor growth requires simultaneous and balanced interaction between growth and distribution processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to assess India's performance in generating the required quantity and quality of employment for its growing population since independence in 1947. But the exercise is set in a longer period that covers India's population growth since the turn of the twentieth century (1901) in relation to its ability to generate employment. The half-a-century preceding independence, despite a slow population growth, was a disaster in generating employment and any signs of structural change. Detailed analysis of the issue since independence shows that there was indeed a demographic burden more than the world average as well as its comparator Asian countries such as China and Indonesia. While employment generation with reference to growth—employment elasticity—was quite impressive during the first four decades of independence, it almost collapsed ever since the adoption of neoliberal economic reforms in 1991, thus entering a phase of 'jobless growth', a phenomenon that is shared by China in a more vigorous form. This has led to what may be called an exclusion of working age people from not just employment but from labour force indicating the emergence of 'discouraged workers' in a larger set that we called underutilized labour. But what about those who are included in the workforce? Does it ensure an escape from poverty for those at the bottom? Our estimates show that the pace of reduction in the incidence of poverty is so slow that a significant share of households is still below the international definition of extreme poverty. We attribute this to the quality of employment characterized by a high incidence of informal sector employment as well as low wages measured by the share of workers not receiving a recommended subsistence wage. The absence of any kind of social security to an overwhelming share of workers adds to this situation of absolute poverty. Finally we examine the question of poverty from the point of manifold inequalities by dividing the households in the economy in terms of their employment, educational, rural–urban, and social group statuses for estimating predicted probability of being poor. The results bring into sharp focus the huge variation in predicted probability that shows households with low education, disadvantaged social group status, casual nature of employment, and living in rural areas at the bottom end of the scale. These results bring out the imperative for creating more employment with better quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the issues and challenges in providing financing to the poor people based on the experience of Baitul Maal Wa Tamwil (BMT) in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach – A series of structured interviews were conducted with the chairman and staff of the Central BMT (Induk Koperasi Syariah) in Jakarta which is the head-quarter of 382 BMTs throughout Indonesia, with additional chairman and shari’ah supervisory in Central BMT (Pusat Koperasi Syariah) in Makasar. Subsequently, the results from the structured interviews were analyzed using qualitative analysis to arrive at the model of the peculiarities of financing the poor in Indonesia. Findings – The findings show that the Central BMT has built specific products and empowerment mechanisms for the poor and has an ideal product to be applied in 382 BMT in Indonesia. There are two schemes of financing source in BMT, namely, social ministry (Kelompok Usaha Bersama) and private financing (national and international donor). Specifically, the peculiarities of financing given in BMT are not only in the term of capital but also in the term of providing infrastructure and training for the poor. Moreover, collateral must be provided as a screening process for the poor people to secure any form of financing. If there is no collateral, potential borrowers must opt for joint-liability financing. Furthermore, if the poor could not repay the financing, endowment coming from charity and compulsory Islamic tax (zakat, infaq and sadaqah) would play a vital role to cover for the financing default. Lastly, religious capacity building is also provided as a part of risk management aspect. Research limitations/implications – This study was only conducted in Indonesia which focussed on the peculiarities of financing for the poor people in Indonesia BMT. Despite this limitation, the findings of this study enable the construction of a model that highlights the issues and challenges that might arise in financing the poor in general. Originality/value – The paper adds to the literature on Islamic microfinance by enabling researchers and practitioners to understand the model of Islamic microfinance in Indonesia. It also contributes toward enriching the knowledge in the Islamic microfinance area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One-third of the global population is aged under 20 years. For children with life-limiting conditions, palliative care services are required. However, despite 80% of global need occurring in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the majority of children's palliative care (CPC) is provided in high-income countries. This paper reviews the status of CPC services in LMICs--highlighting examples of best practice among service models in Malawi, Indonesia and Belarus--before reviewing the status of the extant research in this field. It concludes that while much has been achieved in palliative care for adults, less attention has been devoted to the education, clinical practice, funding and research needed to ensure children and young people receive the palliative care they need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas (PAs) are central to sustainability targets, yet few evaluations explore outcomes for both conservation and development, or the trade‐offs involved. We applied counterfactual analyses to assess the extent to which PAs maintained forest cover and influenced well‐being across >31,000 villages in Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia. We examined multidimensional aspects of well‐being, tracking education, health, living standards, infrastructure, environment, and social cohesion in treatment and control villages between 2005 and 2018. Overall, PAs were effective at maintaining forest cover compared to matched controls and were not detrimental to well‐being. However, impacts were highly heterogeneous, varying by island and strictness of protection. While health, living standards, and infrastructure aspects of well‐being improved, education access, environmental conditions, and social cohesion declined. Our analysis reveals the contexts through which individual PAs succeed or fail in delivering multiple benefits and provides insights into where further on‐ground support is needed to achieve conservation and development objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to examine the fuzzy c-means clustering (FCM) method to establish the optimum cluster accuracy of zakat potential in Indonesia. A spatial mapping approach is also suggested and can be considered as the first step in knowing the distribution of zakat potential in Indonesia. Furthermore, strategies that can be implemented are formulated to increase zakat collection in Indonesia. Potential zakat data from the National Amil Zakat Agency (Baznas) in 2020 consisting of bank deposits, salaries, agricultural products, plantation products, and staple foods. Each province in Indonesia is used as the proposed variable. In this paper, firstly collecting data on indicators of potential zakat. Second, the FCM clustering algorithm. Third, the results of the FCM grouping are visualized in the form of a mapping. This novel mapping study with FCM was applied in order to analyze clustering accuracy. The FCM results confirm 2 optimum clusters for zakat potential in Indonesia where cluster 2 has more members than cluster 1. Besides, the second cluster only has one variable that has a high value, namely agricultural products, while the rest is in the first cluster. This indicates that the first cluster has a higher potential for zakat. The application of fuzzy c-means (FCM) to obtain the optimum cluster on zakat potential to produce a mapping of zakat potential is a novelty in the field of Islamic economic studies. Finally, the results of the analysis with this approach provide optimum results to strengthen the zakat collection strategy in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo took office in 2014, Indonesia was facing stagnating poverty and high inequality. To address these problems, he quickly introduced several initiatives, mainly in the form of social assistance programmes which gave the poor access to education and health services, as well as food and cash transfers, and grants for villages as mandated by the Village Law. This paper assesses the implications of these initiatives on poverty and inequality, by correlating economic growth with real per capita household consumption growth by quintile at the district level. The results indicate that economic growth has become less pro-poor during the first three years of the Jokowi government. This is indicated by lower growth elasticity of consumption of the poorest 20 per cent of the population, while those of the middle quintiles have increased significantly and that of the richest 20 per cent remains the highest. This suggests that Jokowi's poverty and inequality reduction strategy is not sufficient. A complementary approach to connect the poor to economic growth -- through job creation and income generation -- is needed. Furthermore, the findings also show that it is important to pay more attention to assist the livelihood of the poor who live in Java as well as the urban poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]