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A standard method for calculating poverty lines (e.g. Ravallion, 1994) is not fully specified. The choice of the “reference population” for determining food baskets is left to the decision of the individual analyst. However, the poverty line can be quite sensitive to the real income of the reference group because the “quality” of the food basket—measured as the food expenditures per calories—rises sharply with income.
Indonesia changed its development strategy from an inward-looking import substitution to an outward-looking export orientation in the mid 1980s. Deregulation measures introduced during this period have made the Indonesian economy become more integrated with the world economy. This study examines the impact of a more globally integrated Indonesian economy on its labor market.
Social protection programs are underway to help assist individuals, households, and communities to better manage risk as well as to provide support to the chronically poor. In pre-crisis Indonesia, formal social protection programs hardly existed and most social protection was achieved through informal arrangements.
Towards the end of year 2000, a group of researchers from the Social Monitoring and Early Response Unit (SMERU) Research Institute in Jakarta conducted a study of small-scale rural credit in a number of villages traditionally associated with wet-rice cultivation in the Cirebon area of West Java.
It is well known that the economic crisis in Indonesia has caused the poverty rate to increase significantly. The present study finds, not only that the poverty rate increased significantly, but also that much of the increase was due to a large increase in the chronic poor category (i.e. the poor who have expected consumption below the poverty line and most likely will stay poor in the near future).
