Poverty | Yangki Imade Suara

“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!).