Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Postscript: The 2008 Financial Crisis
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary and Acronyms
- The Editors
- The Contributors
- 1 A Brief Overview of Growth and Poverty in Indonesia during the New Order and after the Asian Economic Crisis
- Part One Trends in Poverty and Technical Issues of Measurement
- Part Two Poverty Alleviation Policies and Programs
- 6 Designs and Implementation of the Indonesian Social Safety Net Programs
- 7 Safety Nets or Safety Ropes? Dynamic Benefit Incidence of Two Crisis Programs in Indonesia
- 8 New Approaches to the Targeting of Social Protection Programs
- 9 Post-crisis Social Protection Programs in Indonesia
- 10 Conclusion: Coping with the Crisis
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - New Approaches to the Targeting of Social Protection Programs
from Part Two - Poverty Alleviation Policies and Programs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Postscript: The 2008 Financial Crisis
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary and Acronyms
- The Editors
- The Contributors
- 1 A Brief Overview of Growth and Poverty in Indonesia during the New Order and after the Asian Economic Crisis
- Part One Trends in Poverty and Technical Issues of Measurement
- Part Two Poverty Alleviation Policies and Programs
- 6 Designs and Implementation of the Indonesian Social Safety Net Programs
- 7 Safety Nets or Safety Ropes? Dynamic Benefit Incidence of Two Crisis Programs in Indonesia
- 8 New Approaches to the Targeting of Social Protection Programs
- 9 Post-crisis Social Protection Programs in Indonesia
- 10 Conclusion: Coping with the Crisis
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
The Indonesian experience of implementing social protection programs during the economic crisis of the late 1990s and also during the post-crisis period shows that targeting in programs of this kind is always difficult. As a consequence, social protection programs always suffer from the problems of undercoverage and leakage at the same time. Both problems cause these programs to become less effective and less efficient than they have potential to be (Sumarto et al. 2002). Hence there is a clear need to improve targeting at two levels simultaneously: the geographic and the individual levels. This paper describes attempts to develop more effective targeting tools than those already in use in Indonesia.
POVERTY MAPPING: A TOOL FOR BETTER GEOGRAPHIC TARGETING
The Advantages of Small-area Poverty Mapping
Ideally, geographic targeting should be based on a description of poverty incidence and other indicators of economic welfare in small areas or at low administrative levels. It is here that poverty mapping offers advantages. Detailed poverty maps of small areas can provide benefits to help address many of the shortcomings of aggregate poverty profiles and can greatly enhance and sharpen poverty analysis.
First, small-area poverty maps can obviously reveal the variations in local poverty levels. Almost all countries in the world have regions that are well off and others that have lagged behind. Such differences are often obscured in national-level statistics, a problem that is particularly critical in large and heterogeneous countries like Indonesia. Second, poverty maps can improve the targeting of interventions, which means that resources can be used more effectively. Poverty maps have the potential to reduce the risk that benefits may be leaked from a program to non-poor households. Similarly, they can also reduce the risk of undercoverage, that is, the possibility that poor households will be missed by a program.
Third, poverty maps can help governments to state their policy goals objectively. If allocation decisions are based on observed geographic poverty data rather than on subjective rankings of regions, the transparency and credibility of government decision-making is increased. Poverty maps can therefore help limit the influence of special interests in allocation decisions. This is particularly relevant in the context of currently decentralized Indonesia.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Poverty and Social Protection in Indonesia , pp. 190 - 217Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak InstitutePrint publication year: 2010