00074918.2010.522506

(1)

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cbie20

Download by: [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji] Date: 18 January 2016, At: 19:32

Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Indonesia Update 2010 Employment, living

standards and poverty in contemporary Indonesia

Karina Bontes Forward

To cite this article: Karina Bontes Forward (2010) Indonesia Update 2010 Employment, living

standards and poverty in contemporary Indonesia, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 46:3, 379-380, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2010.522506

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2010.522506

Published online: 23 Nov 2010.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 406

(2)

Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2010: 379–80

CONFERENCE REPORT: INDONESIA UPDATE 2010

EMPLOYMENT, LIVING STANDARDS AND POVERTY

IN CONTEMPORARY INDONESIA

Karina Bontes Forward

Australian National University

The Indonesia Update Conference, now in its 28th year, was held at the Austral-ian National University on 24–25 September. Convened by Chris Manning (Indo-nesia Project, ANU) and Sudarno Sumarto (SMERU Research Institute, Jakarta), the conference attracted around 300 participants from academia, government, NGOs and the business community, including many from Indonesia. Apart from the tradi-tional political and economic updates, both of which are published in this issue of BIES, six broad topics were covered: employment, migration and microenterprises; education and health; health care for the poor; trends in poverty and social protec -tion; government interventions; and the politics of poverty.

Although programs directly targeting poverty were largely non-existent during the Soeharto era, poverty fell rapidly. Since the introduction in the late 1990s of

a social safety net to protect the poor from the impact of the Asian inancial cri -sis (AFC), anti-poverty programs have proliferated, yet their impact on poverty over the last decade has been relatively limited. Understanding the impact on poverty of growth, job creation, spending on education and health, and special anti-poverty programs is therefore a major challenge.

In his keynote address, Lant Pritchett (Harvard University) looked at Indonesia’s growth, governance and poverty performance in the democratic post-Soeharto era compared with previously. Sudden country transitions to democracy typically result in slower growth, and Pritchett argued that outcomes have been better than could be expected, although poverty decline has been slower than in the pre-transition period. Hal Hill (ANU) and Haryo Aswichayono (Centre for Strategic and Inter-national Studies, Jakarta) discussed the role of industrialisation in creating employ-ment opportunities both before and after the AFC. The growth of employemploy-ment in labour-intensive manufacturing has fallen sharply since 1998. The paper explored the reasons for this, and found that it was due largely to poor performance by larger

irms. Also focusing on the labour market, Sherry Tao Kong (ANU) and Tadjuddin

Noer Effendi (Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta) reported their research on rural–urban migration to four Indonesian cities, the results of which suggest that educational achievement is a powerful predictor of occupational mobility.

Related to this conclusion were two papers dealing with education outcomes and challenges. Daniel Suryadarma (ANU) pointed out that Indonesian school-children have lower levels of mathematics and science competence than those in other countries. A high level of teacher absence is a major contributor to poor student performance. Another problem is a gross imbalance in the distribution of teachers between urban and remote areas. Risti Permani (University of Adelaide)

(3)

380 Karina Bontes Forward

explored education challenges from the perspective of Islamic madrasah schooling. She noted that although religious studies tend to crowd out more economically relevant subjects such as maths and science, reducing the religious component does not seem to increase academic achievement. The accessibility of madrasah to the children of poor families is somewhat instrumental in decreasing inequality.

Asep Suryahadi (SMERU Research Institute, Jakarta) emphasised that, although the poverty rate has fallen greatly, the percentage of the population vulnerable to poverty is still large, so poverty reduction efforts should focus on those both below and a little above the poverty line. More needs to be done to help the poor through labour law reform, investment in infrastructure, and encouragement of labour-intensive manufacturing. Lisa Hannigan (AusAID, Jakarta) argued that a

major problem is gaps in coverage of the poor. She identiied new gaps not yet

part of mainstream policy discussion, and argued that better understanding is needed of the risks and stresses that poor people face.

Government policies were the focus of the presentations by Vivi Yulaswati (Bappenas, Jakarta) and Vivi Alatas (World Bank, Jakarta). Vivi Yulaswati argued that economic growth alone is not enough to reduce poverty, and so the govern-ment is undertaking a wide range of anti-poverty interventions, the main ones discussed here being the National Program for Community Empowerment and the Conditional Cash Transfer program. Vivi Alatas examined how best to target poor households or individuals to improve the impact of poverty alleviation

pro-grams. She reported on a ield experiment to evaluate two main approaches: proxy

means tests, involving a census of ‘hard-to-hide’ assets, and community-based targeting, in which villagers are asked to rank themselves from richest to poorest. Not all poverty alleviation efforts are government based, however. Minako Sakai (University of New South Wales) discussed how Islamic alms-based programs are helping to create new approaches to poverty reduction. This is being encouraged by the Islamic resurgence and increased interest in piety among the middle class. In the session on health, Robert Sparrow (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) explored Indonesia’s ambitious plan to achieve universal health insurance by 2014, despite low levels of public health care utilisation. The indirect costs of health care, particularly income forgone and travel expenses, are a major prob-lem for the poor, who therefore make little use of hospitals. Lisa Cameron and Susan Olivia (Monash University) focused on the impact of poor sanitation on health. Each year tens of thousands of Indonesian children die from faecal borne diseases, the spread of which is due largely to many households having a poor-quality toilet or no toilet at all. Some community-driven programs for improving sanitation seem to be having some success.

The inal session considered political economy issues. John McCarthy focused

on the widespread social and environmental transformations that result from rapid

agricultural development, speciically oil palm development in Sumatra. John

Maxwell (Canberra) and Ari Perdana (University of Melbourne) emphasised that

although the oficial poverty level is around 13% of the population, an alternative

poverty line set at $2 a day encompasses almost half the population. There are now many anti-poverty programs, but Indonesia will need to show stronger political will if it is to get even close to achieving its Millennium Development Goals.

Papers presented at the conference will be published by the Institute of South-east Asian Studies in its Indonesia Update series in early 2011.