Policy Research
The link between migration and development is largely considered to be limited to remittances. This is reflected in the Indonesian analogy of migrant workers as “remittance heroes,” emphasizing the financial capital sent by workers back home. This paper tries to enlarge the conceptualization of migrant workers to include all forms of human, financial and social capital.
Following on successes in several South American countries, Indonesia initiated its own pilot conditional cash transfer program beginning in 2007 called, Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH). The program follows a similar design to South American models in that it designates the mother (or the woman in the household) as the primary recipient of the transfer.
To avoid the middle income trap, Indonesia needs to start shifting its economy to higher-value products, which requires a workforce that has an increasingly high level of knowledge, skills, and competencies. This implies that Indonesia needs to put more serious effort into the improvement of the quality of its education system.
Targeted cash transfer programs have been an important policy tool in developing countries. This paper considers (i) how the timing of transfers affects household expenditure and labor supply responses, and (ii) how household expectations shape our interpretation of those responses.
This paper investigates the relationships between inequality, elite capture, and targeting performance of the two biggest social protection programs in Indonesia, the Rice for the Poor (Raskin) and Direct Cash Transfer (BLT) programs. Both programs differ in their targeting methods. While targeting in Raskin is decentralized, targeting in BLT is more centralized.
