Conditional cash transfers Major household income support programmes

185 programmes. Meanwhile, other households including the very poor households that are not eligible for the PKH will still receive BLT cash payments and Raskin rice. When BLT programmes have been implemented in the past, poor households received assistance of IDR120,000–IDR350,000 per month. At the time of writing this report, when the BLT programme had ceased to be implemented, eligible households should have been able to receive assistance in the range of IDR20,000–250,000 per year. The findings of various studies have indicated that much of the assistance received by households benefitted children. Rice from the Raskin programme was used to feed children, while the savings due to the subsidized cost of the Raskin rice could be used to supplement their nutritional needs with vegetables and sources of protein, as well as other needs. The number of children who benefitted from the Raskin programme was significant – according to 2009 SUSENAS data, the percentage of children from households who were recipients of the Raskin programme was 41.22 per cent of all Indonesian children see Table 6.8. Table 6.8: Children living in households that received various forms of government assistance Indicators Children of all the children in Indonesia 2009 2003 Annual Changes Households that receive health insurance Jamkesmas Households that receive subsidized rice Raskin Households that receive anti-poverty credit KUR Households whose children receive scholarships 15.52 46.1 2.11 7.49 9.34 41.22 5.99 3.65 -1.03 -0.81 0.65 -0.64 Source:฀Estimated฀using฀data฀from฀2003฀and฀2009฀SUSENAS฀Panel,฀except฀scholarship฀from฀SUSENAS฀MSBP฀data฀are฀weighted฀by฀ population. During the qualitative studies in North Jakarta and East Sumba, a few respondents stated that the Raskin programme was very helpful in ensuring adequate food consumption for the family, and reducing the cost of rice. Although the quality of the rice was often poor, this was accepted by households as the price was far below the market price. Assistance from the BLT programme was partially used by recipient households to meet the needs of children. Data from the SUSENAS surveys and analysis by the SMERU Research Institute 2008 based on data from BPS – Statistics Indonesia showed that recipient households used BLT funds to meet various needs. Types of uses that could benefit children directly included food purchases, medical expenses and school fees. A substantial proportion of recipient households used the BLT funds to meet these basic needs; 15−42 per cent used the funds for medical expenses, and 11−27 per cent used the funds for school fees Table 6.9. Table 6.9: Use of unconditional cash transfer BLT funds, 2005 and 2008 Type BLT 2005 BLT 2005 BLT 2008 Phase I Phase I Phase II Phase I Consumption Medical expenses School fees Number of households n 99 42 27 2,685 90 15 11 89 96 41 27 1,968 80 32 13 90 Source:฀Data฀processed฀from฀SUSENAS฀irst฀two฀columns฀and฀SMERU฀Research฀Institute฀next฀two฀columns 186 A study conducted by Bazzi, Sumarto and Suryahadi 2010 has examined the impact of the unconditional cash transfer BLT programme on education, health and the students’ working hours. The study found that:1 The BLT funds enabled households to increase their use of outpatient health services, particularly at relatively higher quality private institutions; 2 BLT reduced the number of hours worked per student per day by about 0.2–0.5 hours and the number of days worked per week by 0.05–0.2 days, lesser working hours can be associated with increasing study hours for students; 3 for working age adults, however, receipt of BLT programme assistance appears to precipitate a small decline in the labour supply in the order of one hour per week. Respondents of the qualitative study in North Jakarta and East Sumba also stated that they used the BLT programme funds to meet daily consumption needs; for example, to pay for electricity, school fees and other expenses. They considered the cash from the BLT programme very useful as it could be used to pay for various daily needs. Therefore, they regretted the discontinuation of this programme. The PKH conditional cash transfer programme was partly intended to support the health and education of children. According to the SMERU Research Institute 2010, PKH recipients generally used the funds to meet the health and educational needs of their children, such as buying milk, extra food, shoes, uniforms, school supplies and snacks at school. According to the qualitative study in North Jakarta, the funds from the PKH programme were mainly used to finance children’s school needs as well as milk and food for children under the age of five years and pregnant women. This programme was also associated with a reduction in the school dropout rates at elementary and junior secondary school levels.

6.4 Recommendations

As the number and proportion of children in poor households was disproportionately higher than in wealthier households, efforts to improve the welfare of poor households will significantly improve the welfare of children in these households. The Government of Indonesia has made considerable progress in establishing poverty reduction programmes. Targeted household income support programmes have grown, particularly since the Asian financial crisis in 19971998, both in terms of the scope, budget allocations and coverage of recipients. Of the three clusters of poverty reduction programmes, social assistance programmes received the greatest attention from the government in terms of budget allocation. Most of these programmes are in the form of family or household-based income support, which has directly and indirectly benefited children as household members. In the short term, these social assistance programmes help poor, very poor and near-poor households by, at the very least, supporting minimum levels of daily food consumption. Social assistance programmes are designed to support poor and near-poor households that are vulnerable to external shocks. Studies have proved that the Raskin and BLT programmes benefited the targeted households by offsetting the impact of the rising fuel and rice prices in Indonesia. Considering the long-term impact of the social assistance programmes, some are designed to help the development of human capital by supporting improved health and education for children, such as the PKH programme, which specifically addressed the basic health, nutrition and education needs of the children of very poor families who met the eligibility criteria. Against all the successes, the effectiveness of these programmes in reducing poverty levels in poor households is still unclear, due to the implementation challenges, such as overlapping programmes, mis-targeting of beneficiaries, as well as under-coverage, due to a lack of up- to-date data, poor coordination and problems with distribution mechanisms. There was some criticism that the design of the programmes was not practical given the real conditions in Indonesian society. On the supply side, some improvements needed in government poverty reduction efforts are: •฀ Targeting฀of฀households฀should฀be฀improved฀ and tightened in order to reduce errors and increase the coverage of poor households.