Poverty and Inequality Analysis
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.
Using cross-section data from household surveys, we estimate several categories of household poverty and vulnerability in Indonesia by combining the available information on current consumption levels, estimates of vulnerability to poverty, and estimates of expected consumption levels.
