Designing More Effective Extreme Poverty Interventions Through Better Poverty Data Analysis

The atmosphere of the workshop on finalizing the draft on simplification of key performance indicators for the provincial government from the back of the room, there were four men and one woman sitting in a row at the front of the room.

The atmosphere at the extreme poverty eradication program workshop in North Sumatra from the back of the room, showing the heads and backs of the participants sitting watching a speaker

Despite an impressive achievement in extreme poverty reduction, Indonesia is remained struggling to have a better data for better targeting and program development. Indonesia’s extreme poverty rate dropped from 18.8 percent in 2002 to 1.5 percent in 2022. The Government of Indonesia (GOI) committed to alleviate extreme poverty in 2024 which requires tremendous effort to achieve.

Effective program interventions for extreme poverty alleviation will largely depend on a reliable data of whom to be targeted and what characteristics or needs of the target groups. In 2023, GOI has released the Targeting Data for the Acceleration of Extreme Poverty Elimination (P3KE) as an official reference for extreme poverty targeting, issued by the Coordinating Ministry of Human Development and Culture (Kemenko PMK).

The P3KE database was generated from by-name-by-address data of the population who cannot afford standard living cost of at least Rp10,739 per day. In North Sumatra, it is estimated that 1.6 million people are under this condition. To ensure that data is valid and verified, GOI requested the local governments to verify and validate the data prior to its utilization for program targeting. USAID ERAT has supported the provincial government of North Sumatra to supervise the local governments in accelerating data verification and validation process at the district level.

USAID ERAT provided specific technical assistance to the provincial government on database analysis and processing to provide a basis for the subnational governments in formulating program interventions. USAID ERAT assisted the provincial and local governments to overlay the P3KE database with other sets of databases, including Population Administration database under the Population and Civil Registration (Dukcapil) Office, the Integrated Database of Social Welfare (DTKS) managed by the Social Affairs Office, and the database of the recipients of subsidized health insurance premium managed by the Agency for Social Protection Management (BPJS) for Health.

This multiple database processing and analysis resulted in a unified beneficiary data that can be sorted based on assistance programs received and family members’ characteristics, including household access to clean water, electricity, and housing conditions. This consolidated individual and family data greatly assists the government in formulating specific program interventions for specific characteristics of poverty for the government at both province and district level.

As a result of USAID ERAT’s intervention, P3KE, DTKS, and Dukcapil now have more harmonious and complete data, not just by name and by address. The provincial government is now more confident in ensuring its programs to be more targeted and enable them to achieve the result of alleviation of extreme poverty.

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