A Bad Luck: People with Disabilities (PWD) and Poverty in Indonesia

PWD are more likely to have a lower socioeconomic status and a couple of disadvantages due to earning and conversion handicap. Involving PWD on the development agenda will expedite the progress of poverty reduction; however, there is still a low prioritization of poverty eradication of PWD due to lack of data and research. Therefore, there is an urgent need to provide evidence-based study to support and mainstream PWD on the development agenda in Indonesia. This study, using the 2012 third quarter of national-social economic survey (SUSENAS 2012 Q3), aims at examining the impacts of disability, types and sources of disability on household’s poverty status and household’s poverty gap index. Applying Logistic and Tobit regressions, this study confirmed that disabled-headed household is more likely to become poor by 1.3% and have deeper poverty gap index by 2.6%. Household heads with a visual impairment are less likely to be poor compared to other disabled-headed households. On the other hand, a disabled household head who has a self-care problem tends to have a higher probability of falling into poverty. Moreover, household head with congenital disability has a higher probability of being poor by 4.8% and has deeper poverty gap index for about 7.8%. This study then suggests three policy recommendations in order to eradicate poverty of PWD: 1) provide rehabilitative care for PWD with self-care problem, 2) prevent disabilities at birth through prenatal intervention, and 3) establish different poverty alleviation policies for PWD and non-PWD, due to their different circumstances and needs.