Evaluating Indonesia’s BPNT/Sembako and Village Funds: Targeting Accuracy, Poverty Impacts, and the Design-Implementation Gap
Despite substantial poverty reduction over the past two decades, driven by economic growth and expanded social protection, poverty in Indonesia remains uneven across regions. This thesis examines how two major interventions, BPNT/Sembako and the Village Funds, contribute to poverty reduction and analyses how local governance, data quality, and institutional capacity shape their implementation and effectiveness. The study adopts a mixed-methods design, combining quantitative analysis, drawing on Susenas data (2018–2022) and district-level Village Funds data (2015–2021) to assess targeting accuracy, allocation patterns, and poverty impacts, with in-depth qualitative fieldwork from two villages in Kebumen District, Central Java, illustrating how national policies are implemented locally through data updating processes, village deliberations, and grievance mechanisms. The findings show that BPNT/Sembako is broadly pro-poor but characterised by persistent inclusion and exclusion errors and uneven regional effects. Rural areas benefit primarily from expanded coverage, while urban areas gain from more accurate targeting. Food security analysis indicates that non-beneficiaries consistently face greater food-related hardship, suggesting that the program’s food-restricted design helps stabilise beneficiaries’ access to basic food needs while highlighting the welfare costs of exclusion. Although the number of rural villages remains the dominant determinant of Village Funds allocations, increasing responsiveness to poverty, geographic area, and geographic difficulty points to a gradual shift toward a more redistributive and need-sensitive allocation approach. Within-district estimates indicate that higher Village Funds are associated with modest poverty reductions, particularly during periods of economic stress. Qualitative evidence further shows that fragmented data systems, uneven administrative capacity, and informal grievance practices shape both poverty and food security outcomes at the local level. By integrating cross-scale quantitative evidence with village-level process tracing, this thesis demonstrates that the effectiveness of Indonesia’s poverty alleviation efforts depends not only on program design but also on the governance and social dynamics shaping local implementation. It concludes by recommending reforms in data governance, local capacity building, and program design to enhance the equity and effectiveness of national poverty reduction efforts.
social assistance, BPNT/Sembako, Village Funds, Indonesia, implementation gap, mixed methods, anzsrc-for: 440712 Social policy
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