Goverment policy and local disparity in Indonesia :: A Study using human development indicator

AMBRITA, Lucky, Prof. Jun-ichi Okabe

2010 | Tesis | S2 Magister Ekonomika Pembangunan

It is not easy to overcome poverty in Indonesia, which consists of 33 provinces, 401 districts and 97 cities that have different characteristics from each region on social culture and geographical barrier. For three decades, various efforts have been made to reduce poverty in Indonesia through some approaches, such as; 1). basic needs approach, 2). income approach, 3). human capability approach, and 4). welfare approach. This study examines Bappenas approaches to poverty on the basis of international theoretical debates on human development and tests some indicators to evaluate disparity at provincial level. Human Development Index (HDI) is one indicator of development that can be used to analyze the comparative socio-economic development status of a region and also describe human development in that region. If we depend heavily on GRDP per capita when discussing rural poverty and disparity in Indonesia, it may result in a misleading picture of the provincial status in Indonesia. Indonesian HDI is focused only on fulfillment of the right to health care, education services, and certain standards of living, following global HDI. As a result, we cannot fully evaluate and monitor the implementations of rights-based approach recommended by the Bappenas unless broad scopes of target indicators for rural areas are available. We hope that the Bappenas approach will provide broad scopes of more reliable target indicators to evaluate its policy to overcome existing provincial disparity.

Kata Kunci : Human Development Index (HDI),Government policy,Indonesia