Poverty and Inequality Analysis
In 2011, SMERU staff was fully settled in at the new office in Cikini. This was marked by the resumption of our annual strategic meeting, which was held during a SMERU staff retreat in September in Bandung. In 2010, this activity was suspended due to our focus on moving and adjusting to the new office. In this year’s meeting, we focused on reviewing SMERU’s existing standard operating procedures (SOP) document.
During 2012, SMERU continued with its main activities on research, dissemination and outreach, networking, and capacity building. A major achievement for SMERU in terms of policy impact was gained this year with the assignment from the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) to assist in the development of the Master Plan for Acceleration and Expansion of Poverty Reduction (MP3KI).
The year 2013 was a busy time for SMERU. In addition to completing 11 studies, SMERU also organized 16 seminars and workshops during the year, including three international conferences. The first one was the Child Poverty and Social Protection conference, which SMERU hosted in cooperation with the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) and UNICEF in Jakarta on 10–11 September.
Vulnerability is an important aspect of households' experience of poverty. Many households, while not currently "in poverty", recognize that they are vulnerable to events that could easily push them into poverty-a bad harvest, a lost job, an unexpected expense, an illness, an economic downturn.
The economic crisis has caused a clear deterioration in the welfare of the people of Indonesia. While there are many dimensions to individual and family welfare, here we focus on only one: a consumption expenditures based measure of "poverty." Even within the measurement of poverty we address only two issues.
