“One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like.” Muhammad Yunus (Grameen Bank co-Founder)
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Before I write about poverty in Indonesia and US, there’s two kind of poverty level; First, absolute poverty which is refer to being unable to afford basic human needs including clean water, health care, nutrition, clothes and shelter. Second, relative poverty which is refer to lacking a usual acceptable level of resources or income compare with others in their society or country level.
So, from those two poverty level, we can conclude that poverty means the condition where one person or a group of people who lack the certain amount of material or money to live their life.
Indonesia with its more than 17,000 islands is facing the poverty problem and it’s a widespread issue in recent years. Tim Nasional Percepatan Penanggulangan Kemiskinan (TNP2K) in March 2010 stated that;
- The number of poor people in Indonesia (the population with per capita income below the poverty line) in Indonesia reached 31.02 million (13.33% population), down 1.51 million peoples from 32.53 million (14.15% population).
- During the period of March 2010, the poor in urban areas decreased 0.81 million (from 11.91 million in March 2009 to 11.10 million in March 2010), while in rural areas decreased 0.69 million people (out of 20.62 million in March 2009 to 19.93 million in March 2010).
- The percentage of poor people between urban and rural areas has not changed much during this period. In March 2009, 63.38% of the poor are in rural areas while in March 2010 increased into 64.23% of total poor people.
- The role of food commodities to the poverty line is much greater than the role of non-food commodities (i.e; housing, clothing, education and health. In March 2010, food donates 73.5% poverty line while in March 2009 in 73.6% level.
- Food commodities that affect the poverty line are rice, cigarette filters, sugar, eggs, instant noddles, onion, coffee, tempe and tofu. For non-food commodities are the cost of housing, electricity, transportation and education.
I’m quite shock that cigarette filters affect the poverty line. How come? (that’s a question that we have to solve!).
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What about Poverty in the United States? Please find it in the following graphic..!
I think, “poverty line” would be very different in every place, we can not just see it as a single valuation.
IMHO, poverty means a condition where people can not fulfill their basic needs, such as food, healthiness, education. For example, people in Papua can fulfill their needs of food by cut and “menotok” sago trees. They have a very huge number of sago forest, then they may not need money to buy it. Can we just say that they are poor? I don’t think so.
It may be different if we compare them to–for example–people who live in Jakarta or other big cities. Once you don’t have money, then you will be die. Then yes, we can say this kind of people as poor.
Nice post, btw
Great comment Kak.
your definition of poverty is same with the absolute poverty, I do agree with you that in every region, poverty means different in term of amount of money that they got.
In rural area, total income 1 million is “enough” but in urban area, 1 million is not enough to live because in rural area mostly they don’t have to buy such as vegetable, rice, etc.
So, what about the poverty line in your opinion kak? because it would be very different in every place what is the best method to calculate the number of poverty?