Mistargeting and Regressive Take Up of the Indonesian Rice Subsidy Program

We evaluate household participation in the Indonesian Raskin program, a national rice price subsidy program for the poor. Using a household panel from the 2000 and 2007 rounds of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS), we evaluate program participation over the duration of the year prior to the 2007 survey using four different measures of participation. We find that although the poor as a whole are likely to have higher levels of participation compared to the non‐poor, program participation is regressive among the poor. The poorest households are less likely to purchase Raskin rice over the course of a year, and, conditional on participation, they are likely to purchase lower quantities of rice, they purchase rice with lower frequency and they have lower participation relative to the number of community distributions. We also find that this regressive participation among the poorest households is more severe in urban areas.