An Unfair Start : How Unequal Opportunities Affect Indonesia's Children

Despite rapid economic growth, inequality is increasing in Indonesia. After recovering from the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98, Indonesias real GDP per capita grew at an annual average of 5.4 percent between 2000 and 2014. This robust rate of growth helped to halve the poverty rate from 23.4 percent during the crisis down to 11.2 percent by 2015. However, between 2003 and 2010, consumption per person for the richest 10 percent of Indonesians grew at over 6 percent per year after adjusting for inflation, while for the poorest 40 percent it grew by less than 2 percent per year. This disparity in consumption between different income levels has, in turn, given rise to a sharp increase in the Gini coefficient over the past 15 years, increasing from 30 in 2000 to 41 in 2013.