Developing a Poverty Map for Indonesia (A Tool for Better Targeting in Poverty Reduction and Social Protection Programs)

This field verification study is part of the effort to develop small-area poverty maps for all regions in Indonesia. The small-area poverty maps that contain consumption based poverty estimates at the provincial, district, sub-district and village levels have been developed based on data available from the 1999 Socio-economic Survey (SUSENAS) core and consumption module, the 2000 Village Survey (PODES) and the 2000 Population Census, using the small-area estimation method (poverty mapping). This field verification study was conducted in three sample provinces (Riau, North Sulawesi and West Nusa Tenggara) and particularly covers three districts (Indragiri Hulu, Bolaang Mongondow and West Sumbawa). The main objective of this study is to assess whether the poverty estimates calculated by poverty mapping match the poverty condition of the communities in the field. The assessment is done by comparing the rankings of regions based on poverty mapping and the rankings based on qualitative judgments which are determined through focus group discussions (FGDs) with relevant stakeholders at the provincial, district, sub-district and village levels. These comparisons found that the rankings of districts and sub-districts based on these two methods were fairly consistent, even with the rankings for 2004, and it indicates that the results from poverty mapping down to sub-district level can be used to date with a sufficient degree of confidence. The comparisons between the ranking of villages, however, vary across sub-districts, indicating the need to use the village level poverty estimates with caution. The findings of this study also highlight some possibilities to improve both the poverty mapping and the FGD methods for poverty analysis.