Poverty Persistence in Rural Indonesia: What are the Roles of Public Services and Community Infrastructures?

Transcription

1 Poverty Persistence in Rural Indonesia: What are the Roles of Public Services and Community Infrastructures? Rythia Afkar Center for Development Research (ZEF) University of Bonn Contact: Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the 6 th meeting of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ), Luxembourg, July 13 15,

2 Poverty Persistence in Rural Indonesia: What are the Roles of Public Services and Community Infrastructures? Abstract This paper use four rounds of panel data of household and community surveys from to investigate the persistence of poverty in rural Indonesia using state dependence approach with a particular focus on the role of public services and community infrastructures. Regression results from dynamic probit models show strong evidence of state dependence effect of poverty. In addition to the relevant household and household head characteristics, this paper points to the importance of public services such as sufficient education facilities as well as community infrastructures such as technical irrigation system, paved main road, electricity, and pipe water services, in determining household poverty status. Important policy implications that can be useful for designing effective policies and targeting for poverty reduction programs are also discussed in this paper. JEL Classification: I32, R20, O12 Keywords: Poverty dynamics, public services, rural Indonesia 2

3 1. Introduction Poverty in Indonesia has been falling since the past decades. However about 15 million households are still vulnerable and frequently fall in and out of poverty (World Bank, 2012). The gap between the rich and the poor has also been deepening since Not only facing increasing inequality in household income/consumption, Indonesia also experiences serious problem in inequality in access to public services. The gap in access to infrastructure, health, and education facilities has persisted in recent years, especially in rural areas. In this paper we attempt to contribute to the literature by investigating the dynamics of poverty prevalence in Indonesia focusing on state dependence approach as well as the roles of geographic capital from public provided goods such as community infrastructures and public services. Poverty is a complex problem that interlinked with many other sectors. To end extreme poverty and reduce inequality, collective actions are needed from different actors in many different sectors include health, education, infrastructure, etc. The difficulties in reaching the poor who usually sit at the margins of systems are explained by a set of distances, (i.e., being located in remote or harsh environments), social distances (being excluded, discriminated against, or not having rights or access to services or opportunities), and may also be related to technological and institutional infrastructure deficiencies (von Braun & Gatzweiler, 2014). Therefore the integration of poverty concepts with those of social exclusion, geography, and ecology is needed to address this problem. There is extensive evidence on persistence of poverty in specific geographic areas (Ferreira & Lanjouw, 2001 for Brazil, Park et. al, 2002 for China, Khandker et. al, 2010 for Bangladesh). It does not exclude areas located in countries with high economic growth like China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Peru, and Mexico. Jalan and Ravallion (2002) presents several aspects contributed to this phenomenon. One aspect is because the role of persistence spatial concentration of individuals with personal attributes which constraint their welfare improvement. This would cause the identical individuals have the same opportunity to grow wherever they live. This model is also known as the individualistic model (Ravallion, 1998). Another aspect is because geography has a causal role in determining household s welfare. This means that 3

4 living in a well-endowed areas means that a poor household can eventually escape from poverty (known as geographic model). If the first the case, it is important to distinguish between two mechanisms that may influence poverty prevalence. The first possibility is that individuals are poor because of their characteristics that make them particularly prone to poverty. These characteristics may be observed e.g. education attainment, health conditions, household welfare, or unobserved e.g. lack of motivation, ability, unfavorable sticked behaviors. These characteristics may persist overtime and increase probability of being poor in the future. The second mechanism is that poverty conditions in one period have a causal effect on future poverty due to depreciation of human and physical capital stock. This mechanism is usually called true state dependence effect. There are several examples of state dependence effects: poverty experience that connected to demoralization, loss of motivation or depreciation of human capital could increase the risk of future poverty. Another example if poverty experience is associated with having many connections with bad contacts which may lead to drugs/alcohol problems or have detrimental effects on the quality of job opportunities (Biewen, 2009). Distinguishing between these two mechanisms is crucial, since they imply different policy implications. If the persistence of poverty is due to state dependence effect, then it makes sense to focus on efforts to help households out of poverty in order to reduce their probability of being poor again in the future. While in the case of insignificant effect of state dependence, which means the persistence of poverty is due only to household s unobserved characteristics, any policy aimed at helping households out of poverty e.g cash/in-kind transfer does not reduce their chance of experiencing poverty in subsequent periods. In this paper we analyze poverty dynamics by examining the effect true state dependence effect while allowing for the presence of household s unobserved characteristics. If the latter is the case, that is geography has somewhat a causal role in determining household s welfare, it is important for policy makers to understand the role geographic factors in growth prospects and poverty prevalence (Engerman and Sokoloff, 1998). Indonesia s geographic diversity, including the unequal spatial distribution of geographic and community endowments, makes an interesting case to analyze the existence of geographic poverty traps. Therefore, this paper puts strong 4

5 focus on the roles of geographic capital in the form of public infrastructures and services in a community on poverty prevalence especially in rural areas where the infrastructures and public services are still lacking. One of the biggest concerns in our analysis is the potential endogeneity due to households choosing their community or place of residence. In the case of Indonesia, as in many other developing countries, mobility is not without any costs. Even though migration is administratively possible, it has both huge direct and opportunity costs. Direct cost is borne by Indonesia s geography barriers that imply high transportation costs and limit mobility of the households. While the opportunity costs relates to the previous source of income as well as economic return to the business assets left in the place of origin. Even though Indonesia is recognized as one of the world s major source of unskilled migrant workers to Southeast countries (Hugo, 2005; Sukamdi & Brownlee, 1998), internal migration in Indonesia is dominated by rural to urban migration with the largest cities (e.g. Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, or province s capital city) as main destinations (Muhidin, 2002; Lu, 2008). Moreover, migration status is usually defined at individual level, not at household level. Therefore it is not common to see all household members to move from one rural to another. Poverty dynamics has commonly been analyzed in three ways: income or consumption model with lag structure of the error terms (e.g., Lillard & Willis, 1978), probabilities of ending poverty (Bane & Ellwood, 1986; Stevens, 1994), and approaches to separate chronic and transient poverty (Hulme & Shepherd, 2003; Jalan & Ravallion, 2000). There has been a number of studies on poverty dynamics in developing countries such as South Africa (Aliber, 2003, Carter & May, 2001), Uganda (Deiniger & Okidi, 2003), Cote d Ivoire (Grootaert & Kanbur, 1995), Egypt (Haddad & Ahmed, 2003), India (Khrisna, 2004), Ethiopia (Dercon and Krishnan, 2000), Argentina (Cruces and Wodon, 2003), Bangladesh (Sen, 2003) for Bangladesh, Kenya and Madagascar (Barret et al, 2006). Most of these countries studies only focus on the mobility in poverty status and attempt to distinguish chronic from transient poverty and not take into account the issue of unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence effect. Few papers have analyzed the issue of unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence effect of poverty as well as issues of endogeneity of initial conditions 5

6 (Stevens, 1999; Cappellari and Jenkins, 2001). Bigsten and Shimeles (2008) use proportional hazard models to examine the correlates of poverty-exit and re-entry in Ethiopia. Their results reveal that it is hard to exit poverty once a household falls into poverty, while it is easier to maintain non-poor status once they have moved out of poverty. They further analyze the dynamics of poverty using state dependence model using the baseline specification that simplifies the determination of initial states as well as assumes that the unobserved household characteristics are independent of the other regressors and two other models which allow for endogeneity of the unobserved error terms and serially correlated errors. They found the results are pretty consistent across the three models; the current poverty in Ethiopia is strongly driven by the past history in poverty. Arranz and Canto (2010) examine poverty exit and re-entry rates in Spain and find that the rates vary not only with personal or household characteristics but also with spell accumulation and with the duration of past spells. Their results indicate the importance of duration dependence. Giraldo et al (2002) present no evidence of significant effect of true state dependence of poverty using panel Italian household income and wealth survey. Their analysis reveals that the length of panel does not make any significant difference for the degree of dependence between the states in different time periods. There are numbers of research done about poverty in Indonesia however most of them focuses on static poverty (Bidani & Ravallion, 1993; Suryahadi et al, 2009). The dynamics of poverty has not been widely explored in Indonesia. Few authors have examined the persistence of poverty in Indonesia. Suryahadi & Sumarto (2001) use cross-section data to estimate poverty and vulnerability in Indonesia before and after the crisis. They found that level of poverty and vulnerability increased after the crisis and much of the increase was due to an increase in chronic poverty. Alisjahbana & Yusuf (2003) use a panel data (1993 and 1997) to explore factors that explain chronic and transient poverty. They found that education of household head, assets, and household demographic significantly contribute to the prevalence of chronic and transient poverty. Dartanto & Nurkholis (2011) examine the determinants of poverty dynamics using short panel data and find that 28% of poor households classified as poor (remained poor in two periods) while 7% of non-poor households are vulnerable to being transient poor. Dewi & Suryahadi (2014) study poverty dynamics in Indonesia and assess its impact on the efficiency of poverty 6

7 program s targeting. They use short panel data from Susenas and found that there is high household s poverty dynamics in Indonesia. This leads to targeting inefficiency of poverty programs, particularly in term of inability of the poor to access poverty programs. These previous studies do not focus on the measure of state dependence of poverty, or the effects of geographic/community s endowments. This paper attempts to fill the gap by analyzing the dynamics of poverty prevalence in Indonesia focusing on state dependence approach. We also investigate the role of geographic/community endowments in explaining prevalence of poverty that has been scarcely explored. Furthermore, another contribution of this paper is the use of panel longitudinal dataset in performing our analysis. Most of previous studies use crosssection or short panel (only two waves or within less than 5 years period) datasets. The next section presents the data used in the analysis as well as descriptive statistics of main variables. Section 3 describes the methods used to capture poverty persistence. Section 4 presents estimation results and section 5 concludes the paper. 2. Descriptive statistics 2.1. Provincial differences in poverty prevalence, access to health, education, and infrastructure facilities To provide an overview of inequality in geographic capital and endowments across Indonesia, we analyze provincial differences in poverty prevalence and access to infrastructure, health, and education facilities. Figure 1 shows a large range of poverty rates in Indonesian provinces. Poverty rates in eastern islands of Indonesia are about eight times that of in Jakarta/Bali. Several provinces have poverty rates more than three times that of in other provinces in the same regions. For example Bangka Belitung islands have poverty rates 5.37% while Bengkulu has poverty rates 17.5 %. They are similarly located near the Sumatera island, in the west part of Indonesia. 7

8 Figure1. Indonesian map and poverty map of Indonesia Banda Aceh Medan Manado Pekanbaru Padang Pontianak Kalimantan Samarinda Palu Jambi Bengkulu Palembang Bandar Lampung Jakarta Palangka Raya Banjarmasin Sulawesi Kendari Makassar Maluku Papua Jayapura Bandung Semarang Surabaya Java Yogyakarta Denpasar Mataram Bali Nusa Tenggara Kupang Source: Based on Susenas 2012 To see the gaps in access to health, education and infrastructure facilities across provinces we also use a village census that contains information about availability of infrastructure, health, and education facilities in a village. The census was conducted three times every ten years, from 1983 to the latest one in We use data from 1990 and 2008 to capture the period used in the regression analysis that will be explained in greater details in the next sub-section. The village census recorded information from villages in 1990 and about villages in Figure 2 presents provincial map with share of villages that has access to paved road in each province. In 1990, only about 10% villages in Central Kalimantan and West Kalimantan have paved main road while the shares in most provinces in Java are nearly 50 percent or above. The discrepancies are very apparent in both years although there have been some noticeable improvements from 1990 to More provinces have higher share of villages with access to paved road in Improvements are concentrated in Java and Sumatera islands. Nevertheless, the gap 8

9 remains large. In 2008, the lowest share is Papua with only 13% of villages have access to paved road. On the other part of the country, more than three quarters of villages in Java have access to paved road. Figure 2. Share of villages with access to paved road in 1990 and Share > 60% Share: 40% - 60% Share: 20% - 40% Share: 10% - 20% Share < 10% no data 2008 Share > 60% Share: 40% - 60% Share: 20% - 40% Share: 10% - 20% Share < 10% no data In 1990, two-thirds of Indonesia provinces have only 10 percent or fewer villages with a community health care facility (see figure 3). The rest of provinces have slightly higher shares up to 25%, except for DKI Jakarta with nearly 90% of villages have at least one community health care facility. The shares are higher in 2008 in almost all provinces; however the improvements are less apparent (See figure 3 below). The only provinces with more than a quarter of its villages that has at least one community health care facility are West Sumatera, Yogyakarta, and Jakarta. 9

10 Figure 3. Share of villages with access to a community health care facility in 1990 and Share > 60% Share: 40% - 60% Share: 20% - 40% Share: 10% - 20% Share < 10% no data 2008 Share > 60% Share: 40% - 60% Share: 20% - 40% Share: 10% - 20% Share < 10% no data Figure 4 shows that West Kalimantan has the lowest shares of villages with access to market with only 2%. In contrast, the shares are more than ten times in Southeast Sulawesi and and South Sulawesi. The DKI Jakarta and Yogyakarta have the higher shares with 46% villages have at least one permanent market. In 2008, many villages have better access to market, however the gap is still obvious. Provinces in Maluku and Papua have less than 10 percent share of villages with access to a market. On the contrary, the neighboring island, Sulawesi, has doubled share. In addition to Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Bali has become one of the provinces with the highest share of villages with access to a market (50%). 10

11 Figure 4. Share of villages with access to a market in 1990 and Share > 60% Share: 40% - 60% Share: 20% - 40% Share: 10% - 20% Share < 10% no data 2008 Share > 60% Share: 40% - 60% Share: 20% - 40% Share: 10% - 20% Share < 10% no data Three provinces in Kalimantan (west, central, and east) have the lowest average of household shares with electricity in a village (see figure 5). Meanwhile all provinces in Java, Bali, and West Nusa Tenggara have at least 50% shares. There have been many improvements in access to electricity in the past decades. In 2008, some provinces in Sulawesi and Kalimantan and almost all provinces in Java, Bali, Sumatera have average household shares with access to electricity more than 90 percent. The left behind provinces in terms electricity are West Sulawesi, Riau, East Nusa Tenggara, and Papua with less than 50% household in each village have electricity. 11

12 Figure 5. Average household shares with access to electricity in 1990 and Share > 60% Share: 40% - 60% Share: 20% - 40% Share: 10% - 20% Share < 10% no data 2008 Share > 60% Share: 40% - 60% Share: 20% - 40% Share: 10% - 20% Share < 10% no data Figure 6 shows that the discrepancies in number of junior high school per 1000 students across provinces in 1990 are not large with the lowest number is 1.5 in West Java and the highest is 3.6 is Central Sulawesi. In 2008, most of provinces in Java have the lowest number with less than 3 junior high schools per 1000 (junior-highschool-aged students) while Maluku, North and West Sulawesi, and East Kalimantan have the highest number of junior high school per 1000 students. The low number of junior high school in Java in recent years is not surprising considering the large numbers of migration and urbanization to Java islands in the past decades. 12

13 Figure 6. Number of junior high school per 1000 students in 1990 and Junior high school > 5 Junior High School: 4-5 Junior High School: 3-4 Junior High School: 2-3 Share < 2 no data 2008 Junior high school > 5 Junior High School: 4-5 Junior High School: 3-4 Junior High School: 2-3 Share < 2 no data Average number of health staff per 1000 people in each province in general very low considering it includes physicians, nurse, and other paramedics. In 1990, the average range from 0.4 to 1.6. Lampung and West Java have the lowest number of health staff per 1000 people with 0.4 and North Sulawesi has the highest number with average 1.6. In 2008, some provinces have higher number of health staff (Aceh, Maluku, North Sulawesi, Papua), while some provinces, especially in Java, experienced deteriorating number of health staff (see figure 7). This is again due the increased population in Java in the past decades. 13

14 Figure 7. Number of health staff per 1000 population in 1990 and Health workers > 5 Health workers: 2-5 Health workers: 1-2 Health workers: Health workers < 0.5 no data 2008 Health workers > 5 Health workers: 2-5 Health workers: 1-2 Health workers: Health workers < 0.5 no data Provincial differences in access to infrastructure, health, and education facilities in general show that the largest gaps are found in Papua region, Maluku islands, East Nusa Tenggara as well as the remote areas of Kalimantan and Sulawesi. 2.2 Data for Empirical Analysis The data discussed for empirical analysis in this paper are drawn from the Indonesia Life Family Survey (IFLS). IFLS is a longitudinal socioeconomic and health survey of individuals, households, communities, and facilities. The survey has been conducted in 1993, 1997, 2000, and IFLS collects data on individual, households, the communities in which they live, as well as community s endowments such as economic development and infrastructure facilities they use or have access to. 14

15 IFLS is particularly suitable to examine household s persistence and dynamics of poverty as well as for exploring possible community, household, and individual characteristics contributing to the observed poverty status since it recorded both panel household and geographic/community data that are needed for this particular analysis. IFLS is one of longitudinal datasets with very low attrition rates. 94% households interviewed in the first wave in 1993 (7,224 households) were re-interviewed in the second wave in The re-contact rates remain high for the third and fourth wave with 95% and 92% respectively. The IFLS samples represents 83% of the Indonesian population in out of 27 provinces included in the sample. Provinces were selected to maximize representation of Indonesian population as well as to capture the heterogeneity in culture and socioeconomic conditions. Some far eastern provinces (East Nusa Tenggara, East Timor, Maluku, and Irian Jaya) were excluded due to cost-effectiveness reasons. IFLS randomly selected 321 enumeration areas in the 13 provinces using 1993 Susenas (National Socio-economic Survey) sampling frame. Susenas frame was designed by BPS (Central Bureau of Statistics) based on National Census in Using this frame, Javanese who account for more than 50% of total population proportionally dominated IFLS sample. To measure poverty, we use monthly consumption expenditure and national poverty lines defined by the BPS as a reference line. The definition of consumption used in the dataset incorporates both food and non-food components. Data on food expenditure were recorded for 38 food items purchased during the week prior to the interview. Data on non-food expenditure were recorded during the month prior to the interview and cover household goods including electricity, water, education, health, communication, & transportation. Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the main variable used in the regression analysis. We utilize household and household head characteristics such as household head s age, education, whether the household owns a farm business (owns land for farming and has a title of ownership), a non-farm business, farm business assets (hard stem plants such as coconut, coffee, cloves, rubber, etc, house/building used for farm business, vehicles such as motor bikes, car, truck, water vehicles, tractor, heavy 15

16 equipment such as farming machines, generator, etc), non-farm business assets (land, building, four-wheel vehicles, other vehicles, other non-farm equipments). Furthermore, we analyze public services and community infrastructure variables such as: predominant type of road in the village (paved or non-paved), water source (pipe water) in the village, number of services provided by community health center in the village (outpatient, inpatient, dental, prenatal, childbirth, laboratorium, health checkup, etc), availability of high school in the village, disruptions in pipe water services in the past year, share of village population with access to electricity, and availability of technical (non-primitive) irrigation system. Distance from the office of the head of village to the nearest terminal and provincial capital center are also included. 16

17 Table 1. Summary statistics of variable used in the model Variable N Mean Std. Dev Min Max Own a farm business Own a non-farm business Number of farm business assets Number of non-farm business assets Age of household head Education of household head: Primary school completed Education of household head: high school (or higher) completed Availability of paved main road Availability of piped water Number of health care services provided in the community health center Distance to nearest terminal Distance to the provincial office Availability of high school Ever experienced disruptions in pipe water service in the past year Share of population in a village with access to electricity Availability of technical (non-primitive) irrigation system in the village Measure of ethnic diversity (ELF) Resides in Sumatera Resides in Java Resides in Kalimantan Resides in Sulawesi Resides in Nusa Tenggara We also put control for ethnic diversity measure in a community. Ethnic diversity has been known in the literature to have an effect on economic growth and public goods. Different measures of ethnic diversity have been found to have negative influences on the provision of public goods at the community level (Miguel and Gugerty, 2005; Habyarimana et al., 2007) as well as economic development at the country level (Easterly and Levine, 1997; Alesina et al., 2003; Montalvo and Reynal-Querol, 2005; Goeren, 2014). In an attempt to address this endogeneity problem, we calculate the correlation between ethnic diversity measure ELF (ethno linguistic fractionalization) and public goods provision variables. ELF measure used is an Herfindahl index defined as follows: 17

18 1 where si is the share of ethnic i in a community. This measures fragmentation the probability that two randomly drawn individuals from the unit of observation belong to two different groups/ethnics (Easterly and Levine, 1997). In our datasets, we do not find significant negative association between ELF and public services/community infrastructure variables used in the analysis (see table 2), with exception for variable availability of high school. The correlation coefficient for ELF and availability of high school is negative and significant at 5%, but still very low (< 0.1). Table 2. Correlation between public goods provision variables with ELF Public services and community infrastructure variables Correlation with ELF Availability of paved main road ** Availability of piped water Number of health care services provided in the community health center Availability of high school ** Ever experienced disruptions in pipe water service in the past year ** Share of population in a village with access to electricity Availability of technical (non-primitive) irrigation system in the village ** Notes: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p< Econometric approach State dependence and covariates of poverty The current state of poverty is modeled as a function of poverty in previous period using dynamic probit model where: 1 is poverty status of household i lives at community c at time t. is a vector of household explanatory variables, is a term for unobserved household heterogeneity, is community characteristics at time t, and and is error term. 18

19 The main problem in the dynamic poverty model is that household s poverty status in the initial period may be influenced by an earlier poverty history. In addition, poverty status in the initial period may be correlated with the unobserved characteristics that contribute to poverty. The unobserved factors could be related with motivation, abilities, parental effect, community and social network, etc that can influence poverty status at t = 0. Random effect probit model assumes this initial condition to be exogenous. Therefore it will result inconsistent estimates in our model. There are several alternative method to tackle this problem, such as Heckman (1981) and Woolridge (2005). Woolridge s conditional maximum likelihood estimator To take care the initial condition problem in dynamic non-linear panel data model, Woolridge (2005) propose to model the distribution of the unobserved effect conditional on the initial value and any exogenous explanatory variables. The joint density of the dependent variable (,,, ) can be written as f (,,,,, ). The density of the unobserved individual heterogeneity is specified conditional on the initial value of the dependent variable ( ).,, (2) where (3) With this, can be integrated out from the equation. Using equation (3), the correlation between and is alleviated. This results a new unobservable term that is uncorrelated with the initial value of dependent variable. Substituting equation (3) into equation (1) gives: Pr 1, 2,3,4 Consequently, the likelihood function for household i is given by: 19

20 where is the normal probability density function of the new unobservable term. 4. Results Discussion In this section, we analyze the model using two estimation strategies: a dynamic random effect probit model assuming initial condition exogenous and Woolridge estimator that assume endogenous initial condition. Estimation results in table 3 shows that using dynamic random effect probit model indicates the likelihood of being poor is significantly associated with poverty status in previous period. While being headed by educated, owning a farm and a non-farm business, having higher number of farm and non-farm business assets, living in an ethnically more diverse area, living in a village with available piped water, higher share of population with access to electricity, and technical (non-primitive) irrigation system are negatively associated with the probability of being poor. Furthermore, living in a village that has experienced disruption in pipe water service in the past year positively related with probability of being poor. Woolridge estimators yields lower coefficient (and marginal effect) for the lagged dependent variable than dynamic random effect probit model. The marginal effect of the state dependence parameter declines from 0.16 to This means that after controlling for initial conditions problem, a household who has been poor has a 11% higher probability of being poor in the next period. The marginal effect of initial state of poverty (in 1993) is 0.07 and significant at 1%. Other significant covariates of poverty include owning a farm business, number of nonfarmbusiness assets, living in a village with disruptions of piped water services, availability of technical irrigation system, and level of ethnic diversity in the village. 20

21 Table 3. Estimation results using standard random effect method and Wooldridge Conditional Maximum Likelihood estimator Random Effect Wooldridge Marginal Marginal Coefficient Coefficient Variable effects effects Lagged poverty 0.833*** 0.164*** 0.715*** 0.110*** Own a farm business ** ** *** *** Own a non-farm business ** ** Number of farm business assets ** ** Number of non-farm business assets *** *** *** *** Age of household head ** ** Age of household head squared 0.000** 0.000** 0.000* 0.000* Education of household head: Primary school completed Education of household head: high school ** ** (or higher) completed Availability of paved main road Availability of piped water * * Number of health care services provided in the community health center Distance to nearest terminal Distance to the provincial office 0.000* 0.000* 0.000** 0.000** Availability of high school Ever experienced disruptions in pipe 0.228*** 0.045*** 0.157* 0.024* water service in the past year Share of population in a village with *** *** 0 0 access to electricity Availability of technical (non-primitive) *** *** *** *** irrigation system in the village Measure of ethnic diversity (ELF) *** *** * *

22 Poverty status in *** 0.071*** Region dummies Yes Yes Year dummies Yes Yes Intercept ** *** Notes: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 We also consider the possibility of having a reverse causality problem, that is when not only the differences in public service and community infrastructures may cause poverty, but also poverty itself may have potential to drive the differences in public services and infrastructure facilities. We therefore perform results where we use the lagged values of public services and community infrastructures as regressors (see table 4 below). We find that, similarly to the previous results, the likelihood of being poor is significantly associated with poverty status in previous period. Estimation results using dynamic random effect probit model indicate that the lagged values of availability of paved main road in the village, share of population with access to electricity, and availability of technical (non-primitive) irrigation system are negatively associated with the probability of being poor. Furthermore, lagged values of distance to the nearest terminal positively related with probability of being poor. Wooldridge estimator yields other significant covariates such as lagged values of availability of high school in the village and ever-experienced disruptions in pipe water services. The marginal effect of lagged dependent variable and initial state of poverty are about at the consistent level with the previous results. Table 4. Estimation results using lagged values of public services and community infrastructure variables as regressors. Random Effect Wooldridge Marginal Marginal Variable Coefficient effects Coefficient effects Lagged poverty 0.845*** 0.159*** 0.712*** 0.105*** Own a farm business ** ** *** *** Own a non-farm business *** *** Number of farm business assets Number of non-farm business assets *** *** *** ***

23 Age of household head ** ** Age of household head squared 0.000** 0.000** Education of household head: Primary school completed Education of household head: high ** ** school (or higher) completed Availability of banking services Lagged values of: Availability of paved main road *** *** * * Availability of piped water Number of health care services provided in the community health center Distance to nearest terminal 0.006** 0.001** Distance to the provincial ** 0.000** office Availability of high school *** *** Ever experienced disruptions * 0.023* in pipe water service in the past year Share of population in a village with access to electricity Availability of technical (non-primitive) irrigation system in the village * * *** *** * * Measure of ethnic diversity (ELF) *** *** Poverty status in *** 0.064*** Region dummies Yes Yes Year dummies Yes Yes Intercept * ** Notes: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 23

24 Our results also show the importance of having irrigation system for rural households who are mostly work in agriculture sector. Resides in a village which has proper technical irrigation system decreases the probability of being poor by about 2-3%. 5. Conclusion This paper aims to investigate the dynamics and persistence of poverty in rural Indonesia during the period To understand correlates of poverty, this paper use panel longitudinal dataset IFLS that recorded information both of household conditions as well as the community capitals where the households live in and have access to. We use a standard dynamic random effect model, as well as an alternative model that take state dependence, unobserved individual heterogeneity, and the initial conditions problem into account. We show evidences that the true state dependence of poverty is significant nevertheless quite low in Indonesia. In addition to the relevant household (e.g. having business and assets) and household head characteristics (education of household head), this paper points to the importance of public services and community infrastructures that play roles in poverty prevalence. Resides in a village with access to a paved main road, high school, and proper non-primitive irrigation system would be less likely to be in poverty. While residing in a village with larger distance to a pier or a terminal (for vehicles with four wheels) as well as experience of having interruptions in pipe water services are positively associated with probability of being poor. Important policy implications that can be directed from the findings of this paper is that poverty reduction strategy should take public services and community infrastructures into consideration. This includes the effort in invest in infrastructure, health, and education especially in the lagging regions in Indonesia as well as in targeting of social protection programs for the poor. Social protection makes the best of its course when it reaches the most needy people. The effective targeting method is essential in designing social protection system in a country. We suggest that the 24

25 targeting should not only based on household characteristics but also on relevant community characteristics where the poor live. Acknowledgement The author would like to particularly thank Joachim von Braun for his advice and support and gratefully acknowledge financial support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) during the course of her doctoral study. 25

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