JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com – The trend in the number of multidimensionally poor people in Indonesia has decreased significantly in the last four years compared to the period 2012-2014. This is according to Perkumpulan Prakarsa, a research institution in the field of fiscal policy, social policy, and sustainable development, which measures the Multidimensional Poverty Index (IKM) for the period 2015-2018. They use the Alkire-Foster method and are based on data from the National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) in the period 2015-2018 by calculating deprivation in the dimensions of health, education and standard of living. "The results of the 2015-2018 IKM show that government intervention in various programs and policies that are directly related to efforts to reduce poverty rates and those that are not directly related to efforts to reduce poverty, have proven to be quite successful, although in Papua, NTT and West Papua the multidimensional poverty index value is still quite high," said Perkumpulan Prakarsa Executive Director, Ah Maftuchan in a written statement, Thursday (11/4/2019).
In 2015, there were 34 million poor people, in 2016 there were 30 million people, in 2017 there were 24,9 million people, and in 2018 there were 21,5 million people or only about 8,17%. Maftuchan said the decline in the multidimensional poverty rate was in line with the decline in the monetary poverty rate. Even lower. In September 2018, the monetary poverty rate showed 25,67 million people or 9,66 percent of Indonesia's total population. This figure is the lowest since the monetary crisis in 1998. The results of the IKM calculation show that all provinces in Indonesia experienced a multidimensional decline in the number of poor people. The ratio of the poorest population is concentrated in rural areas. In this study, the characteristics of multidimensional poverty in the last four years were dominated by sanitation problems, inadequate drinking water, and cooking fuel. The poorest Based on the region, the highest multidimensional poor population in 2018 was found in Papua at 60,56 percent, East Nusa Tenggara at 35,64 percent and West Papua at 32,66 percent. Meanwhile, the lowest number of multidimensional poor people in 2018 was in DKI Jakarta Province at 2,17 percent, Yogyakarta at 2,22 percent, and Central Java at 3,74 percent. Maftuchan emphasized that areas where there are still a lot of poor people must remain a priority for future programs.
"The government needs to adopt a multidimensional poverty measurement method to be able to see poverty-prone areas so that poverty alleviation policies are more effective," said Maftuchan. Economic researcher at the Rahmanda Prakarsa Association M Thaariq said there is a fundamental difference between monetary poverty measurement and IKM. The monetary poverty figure only measures income and consumption. "IKM measures broader dimensions so that it is able to map the roots of poverty through several dimensions and indicators that reflect basic human needs so that it can diagnose poverty problems more deeply," said Rahmanda.
source: ThePrakarsa.org
