Paper short abstract:

This study aims to investigate the impact of an unconditional cash transfer program on the dynamics of multidimensional poverty level of rural-urban migrants in Indonesia and factors contributing to the recipients’ movements in and out of poverty.

Paper long abstract:

The government of Indonesia implemented an unconditional cash transfer program called Bantuan Langsung Tunai (BLT) in 2008. The program aims to sustain the consumption of poor households after the rise in fuel and food prices due to the international economic crisis and the government's decision to reduce fuel subsidies.

This study aims to investigate the impact of BLT on the multidimensional poverty dynamics of rural-urban migrants in Indonesia. It also compares the poverty levels of recipients and non-recipients, and examines factors contributing to their movements in and out of poverty. There is limited understanding in how rural-urban migrants progress in cities, especially in terms of their poverty level, and how a government's program as BLT might affect this progress is of particular interest.

Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (Alkire & Foster, 2011) is applied to a longitudinal dataset on rural-urban migrants in Indonesia for four consecutive years from 2008, when the BLT was implemented, to 2011. The dataset used in this study is the survey of Rural-Urban Migration in Indonesia (RUMiI). It was conducted in four major cities to represent four large islands in the country: Tangerang (Java), Medan (Sumatera), Makassar (Sulawesi) and Samarinda (Borneo). The data might not be a nationally representative sample, but these cities have a large number of rural-urban migrants and are able to capture the diversity of the rural-urban migrant experience in Indonesia.