Our Expertise
In this paper we investigate the determinants of student performance in mathematics and dictation tests among fourth-grade school children in Indonesia. We use a unique dataset of school and student information that was collected in a nationally representative survey of 110 public schools in 8 Indonesian provinces in 2003.
This study provides an overview of inequality in Indonesia for the period of 1984 to 2002 using several widely used measurements of inequality. Firstly, unlike previous studies, our paper uses real consumption expenditure that takes into account the high regional price disparity across regions in Indonesia.
This study provides an overview of the concepts used to measure unemployment in Indonesia and their consequences for the measured unemployment trends. One finding shows that BPS’s decision in 2001 to relax the definition of labor force by including discouraged workers has resulted in an artificially high open unemployment rate and disguises the actual decline in traditionally-measured open unemployment rates post-crisis.
Although in general less prevalent than other developing countries at similar stage of development, the problem of child labor in Indonesia is significant. Like in other countries, this study finds that there is a strong link between the child labor phenomenon and poverty. The profile of child labor largely mirrors the profile of poverty. Furthermore, poverty is found as an important determinant of working for children.
Although consumption expenditure data is crucial for assessing the level of people’s welfare and calculating important welfare measures such as the poverty headcount rate, collecting such data requires significant time and effort. In this study, we experiment with three approaches to predict consumption expenditure and poverty at household and aggregate level as simpler alternatives to using consumption expenditure.
