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Jakarta poverty rate drops to 3.42 percent
Jakarta’s poverty rate — the ratio between the number of poor people and the total population — was recorded at 3
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Jakarta’s poverty rate — the ratio between the number of poor people and the total population — was recorded at 3.42 percent in September last year, the third-lowest since widespread reforms were introduced in 1998. The lowest rate of 3.14 percent was recorded in 2001, while the second of 3.18 percent was recorded in 2004, according to a data released on Jan. 15 by Statistics Indonesia’s (BPS) Jakarta office.
BPS Jakarta head Buyung Airlangga said poverty in the city was complex because the breadwinner in a poor family had to provide for nearly six family members. A 2018 Susenas survey by BPS found that a poor family consisted, on average, of at least five members and its affluent counterpart consisted of at least three members.
“Therefore, the fact that the Jakarta administration managed to lower the poverty rate was worth noting given the complexity of the problem,” Buyung told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. “It is not only about the decline in itself.”
The Jakarta administration, under Governor Anies Baswedan, is seeking to reduce the poverty rate by 1 percentage point to 2.7 percent in 2020 from 3.7 percent in 2017, according to the 2017 to 2022 medium-term regional development plan. This means the administration needs to lower the rate by 0.2 percentage points on average per year.
According to BPS Jakarta data, the number of poor people, those with monthly spending below Rp 663,355 (US$48.26) per person, declined by 0.27 percent to 362,300 people in September last year from 372,260 in the same period in 2018.
Institute for Development of Economics and Finance researcher Rusli Abdullah said the decline in Jakarta’s poverty rate should be higher as it had a large budget, which provided flexibility for improving its social assistance programs.
The administration is allocating about 5.5 percent of its Rp 87.9 trillion budget this year, Rp 4.8 trillion, to social assistance programs. The allocation is higher by 0.4 percentage points than the 5.1-percent allocation of Rp 4.4 trillion out of the Rp 86.8 trillion budget last year.
“If the poverty rate has reached a single-digit level, the city is confronted with the so-called last-mile problem,” Rusli said. “The single-digit poverty rate means that the profiles of the poor people are getting more specific, such as disabled, not having required skills and lacking an education.”
Jakarta’s 3.42-percent poverty rate was the lowest compared to other provinces. Papua recorded the highest poverty rate of 26.55 percent in September, followed by West Papua with 21.51 percent and Maluku with 17.65 percent.
Advocacy group Urban Poor Consortium coordinator Gugun Muhammad said the data from BPS only recorded people in extreme poverty because the poverty line was too low given the affordability of daily needs in the capital.
“The poverty line set is too low for the amount of people’s spending on daily needs in Jakarta,” he said. “It does not make any sense.”
Of the September threshold of Rp 663,355, about 68 percent or Rp 451,918 represents the poor’s food-related spending and the remaining 32 percent represents nonfood spending.
Advocacy group Jakarta Urban Poor Network coordinator Eny Rochayati said that the data from BPS was not in line with her observations on the ground, where she saw no change in the number of the city’s poor.
“I don’t really know about the data that shows a declining poverty rate. I still see a lot of people living in poverty,” she said. (dfr)
