Search

The cigarette commodity is the second largest contributor to the food poverty line. Several aspects imply that poor people consume cigarettes despite having a minimal income. In this study, we are interested in investigating factors influencing poor people to be active smokers. Since the consumption number is a set of count data with zero excess, we have an overdispersion problem. This implies that a standard Poisson regression technique cannot be implemented. On the other hand, the factors involved in the model need to be selected simultaneously. Therefore, we propose to use a zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) regression with a minimax concave penalty (MCP) to determine the dominant factors influencing cigarette consumption in poor households. The data used in this study were microdata from the National Socioeconomic Survey (SUSENAS) conducted in March 2019 in East Java Province, Indonesia. The result shows that poor households with a male head of household, having no education, working in the informal sector, having many adult household members, and receiving social assistance tend to consume more cigarettes than others. Additionally, cigarette consumption decreases with the increasing age of the head of household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia faces a growing informal sector in the wake of implementing a national social health insurance system—Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN)—that supersedes the vertical programmes historically tied to informal employment. Sustainably financing coverage for informal workers requires incentivising enrolment for those never insured and recovering enrolment among those who once paid but no longer do so. This study aims to assess the ability- and willingness-to-pay of informal sector workers who have stopped paying the JKN premium for at least six months, across districts of different fiscal capacity, and explore which factors shaped their willingness and ability to pay using qualitative interviews. Surveys were conducted for 1,709 respondents in 2016, and found that informal workers' average ability and willingness to pay fell below the national health insurance scheme's premium amount, even as many currently spend more than this on healthcare costs. There were large groups for whom the costs of the premium were prohibitive (38%) or, alternatively, they were both technically willing and able to pay (25%). As all individuals in the sample had once paid for insurance, their main reasons for lapsing were based on the uncertain income of informal workers and their changing needs. The study recommends a combination of strategies of targeting of subsidies, progressive premium setting, facilitating payment collection, incentivising insurance package upgrades and socialising the benefits of health insurance in informal worker communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Providing an enabling environment for breastfeeding is hampered by the inequitable implementation of paid maternity leave, primarily due to perceived or actual financial costs. To estimate the real cost of paid maternity leave requires using reliable methods. We compared methods utilized in two recent studies in Indonesia. Study A estimated the financial need of providing paid maternity leave in the formal sector with a 10-year forecast at 21% coverage of eligible mothers, while study B estimated similar costs for the informal sector at 100% coverage annually. Results are critical for guiding future application of either method to inform paid maternity leave policies. Methods: We compared number of covered mothers working informally, total annual cost, and cost per mother. We modified some parameters used in study A (method A) to be similar to study B (method B) for comparison, namely the period of estimate (annual), coverage (100%), estimate of women potentially breastfeeding, exchange rate, female labor force participation rate, the percentage of women working in the informal sector, and adding administration cost. Results: The methods differ in determining the number of mothers working in the informal sector who gave birth, the minimum wage as unit cost, and administrative cost. Both studies estimated the cost at various lengths of leave period. Method A requires more macro (e.g. national/regional) level data, while method B involves (e.g. individual) micro level data. We compared the results of method A with method B, respectively: 1) number of covered mothers working informally were 1,425,589 vs. 1,147,204; 2) total annual costs including administrative costs were US$650,230,167 vs. US$633,942,726, and; 3) cost/mother was US$456 vs US$553. Conclusion: Certain flexibilities can be applied to both methods, namely using parameters specific to respective regions (e.g. provincial level parameters), flexible period of analysis, and the use of administrative cost. In a setting where micro data is scarce and not easily accessible, method A provides a feasible approach, while method B will be most appropriate if suitable micro data is available. Future comparison studies in other settings are needed to provide further evidence on the strengths and weaknesses of both methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The economic cost of not breastfeeding in Indonesia is estimated at US$1.5–9.4 billion annually, the highest in South East Asia. Half of the 33.6 million working women of reproductive age (WRA) in Indonesia (15–49 years) are informal employees, meaning they are working as casual workers or they are self-employed (small scale business) and assisted by unpaid/family worker(s). No specific maternity protection entitlements are currently available for WRA working informally in Indonesia. This study aims to estimate the financing need of providing maternity leave cash transfer (MCT) for WRA working in the informal sector in Indonesia. Method: The costing methodology used is the adapted version of the World Bank methodology by Vilar-Compte et al, following pre-set steps to estimate costs using national secondary data. We used the 2018 Indonesian National Socio-Economic Survey to estimate the number of women working informally who gave birth within the last year. The population covered, potential cash transfer's unitary cost, the incremental coverage of the policy in terms of time and coverage, and the administrative costs were used to estimate the cost of MCT for the informal sector. Result: At 100% coverage for 13 weeks of leave, the yearly financing need of MCT ranged from US$175million (US$152/woman) to US$669million (US$583/woman). The share of the yearly financing need did not exceed 0.5% of Indonesian Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Conclusions: The yearly financing need of providing MCT for eligible WRA working in the informal sector is economically attractive as it amounts to less than 0.5% of GDP nominal of Indonesia. While such a program would be perceived as a marked increase from current public health spending at the onset, such an investment could substantially contribute to the success of breastfeeding and substantial corresponding public health savings given that more than half of working Indonesian WRA are employed in the informal sector. Such policies should be further explored while taking into consideration realistic budget constraints and implementation capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the world economy created its own footprint as a result of the phenomenon. 1/3 of that economic space is owned by the informal economy also referred to as the Local Economy or System D. The increasingly sophisticated and world-class phenomenon takes the place of the economic space left by the formal economy. The manipulation of the vast resources, the dynamic practices that take place in the legal and illegal dimensions, provide a guarantee of employment shadowed by survival. This paper traces the phenomenon occurring on the Sebatik Islands of Malaysia and Indonesia. The research approach is qualitative based on the interviews of key informants. The results suggest that this phenomenon occurs due to the fact that economic space and opportunities can be exploited for the sake of sustainability in meeting economic demands, especially marginalized groups at the border that ultimately establish a local integration of kinship relations beyond ethnicity, identity and ethnic boundaries itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the world economy created its own footprint as a result of the phenomenon. 1/3 of that space is owned by the informal economy also referred to as the Local Economy or System D. The connotation is to imagine a work phenomenon that is truly universal without a clear basis for labor. This increasingly sophisticated and world-class phenomenon takes the place of economic space left by the formal economy. The manipulation of the vast resources, the dynamic practices that take place in the legal and illegal dimensions, provide a guarantee of employment shadowed by survival. This paper traces the phenomenon occurring on the Sebatik Islands of Malaysia and Indonesia. The study method was qualitative based on the interviews of key informants. The results suggest that this phenomenon occurs due to the fact that economic space and opportunities can be exploited for the sake of sustainability in meeting economic demands, especially marginalized groups at the border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]