Policy Papers and Commentary
RECENT POLICY PAPERS
(Note that the full list of my publications is in my CV. This page lists only recent policy work.)
Gender Equality and Development. A paper presented at the 2023 Sadli Lecture at the University of Indonesia, 16 May. Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 2023, 59(2):1-29.
Gender equality in Indonesia is approximately at the level you would expect given the country’s level of development. Indonesia has more gender inequality than some neighbouring countries and less than others; and less than in the vast majority of Muslim-majority nations worldwide, regardless of level of income. Women’s economic participation is, however, low relative to Indonesia’s level of development. Female labour force participation is low as many women leave the work force when they get married and have children, particularly in the formal sector as formal sector employers do not generally offer flexible workplace conditions that would increase their ability to retain female employees. Social norms that position mothers as the main caregiver play an additional important role in women’s low economic participation. Public information campaigns that challenge people’s perceptions of gender norms are likely to be an important component of efforts to increase women’s economic participation. Greater female economic participation has payoffs in terms of increased household incomes. By contributing to household income and reducing economic stress within the household, greater female labour force participation is also likely to reduce family violence and so lead to happier home and family lives. A focus on increasing women’s economic empowerment would be farsighted as the country looks to recover from the pandemic and lay the groundwork for a dynamic future.
Paper: Download here.
Blogs: East Asia Forum, DevPolicyBlog.
Link to video recording of presentation (22 Sept 2020).
Consequences of Child Marriage in Indonesia. A report prepared in collaboration with MAMPU - Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment
Child marriage has, in recent years, become a focus of Indonesian public policy. In September 2019, Indonesia’s parliament voted unanimously to raise the legal age of marriage for women from 16 to 19 years, in line with the legal age of marriage for men (House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia, 2019). A reduction in rates of child marriage has also been stated as a target of Indonesia’s National Mid-term Development Plan (2020-2024) and a National Strategy on the Prevention of Child Marriage has been developed to support clearly defined goals.
These changes are potentially good news for current and future Indonesian children, but the law is yet to be implemented across the nation. The aim of this report is to document the consequences of child marriage for Indonesian girls and boys - as they grow into women and men, for their households and their children – and so contribute to a better understanding of the impact of child marriage and the benefits of implementing policies to assist in reducing its prevalence and its consequences.
Executive Summary in Indonesian available here.
Policy Brief: Melbourne Institute Research Insight (English); Indonesian version: Konsekuensi Perkawinan Anak di Indonesia.
Link to video recording of Zoom presentation (22 Sept 2020) in English or in Indonesian.
Social Protection for Women in Developing Countries. IZA World of Labour, Updated Feb 2019 (original version May 2014).
Women are more likely than men to work in the informal sector and to drop out of the labor force for a time, such as after childbirth, and to be impeded by social norms from working in the formal sector. This work pattern undermines productivity, increases women's vulnerability to income shocks, and impairs their ability to save for old age. Many developing countries have introduced social protection programs to protect poor people from social and economic risks, but despite women's often greater need, the programs are generally less accessible to them than to men.
Media Coverage: The Economist, Mar 19, 2019; The Republic, Feb 14, 2020.
Commentary Piece: IZA World of Labor Commentary, 9 Jan, 2017.
Disability in Indonesia: What Can we Learn from the Data? (with D. Contreras-Suarez). A Report prepared in collaboration with the Australian-Indonesian Partnership for Economic Governance and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Aug, 2017.
Disability is an issue that touches many lives in Indonesia. There are at least 10 million people with some form of disability. This represents 4.3% of the population, based on the latest census which almost certainly understates its prevalence. More than 8 million households, or 13.3 percent of the total, include at least one person with a disability. Disability affects not only people with a disability themselves but also their families. Households with a person with a disability have a lower monthly expenditure per capita, with female headed households being particularly vulnerable. Most common disabilities arise from difficulties with vision, hearing and walking. Forty percent of those who have a disability have multiple disabilities. Diseases and accidents cause the vast majority of disabilities (76%), compared with 17% caused by congenital factors. This means that many disabilities are preventable and there is scope for policy to improve outcomes. People with disabilities in Indonesia have lower educational attainment, worse health, fewer economic opportunities and lesser access to public services than people without disabilities. The average years of education of a person without a disability is 6.5 years. However, for someone with a moderate disability it is 4.4 years, and for someone with a severe disability it is on average only 2.8 years. The majority of people with disabilities in Indonesia do not use assistive devices (e.g. hearing aids, walking aids, etc). For people with limited vision, 80% of those who report that they need glasses also say that they do not have them, and 28% of those who say they need a white cane do not have one. For those with hearing impairments who say that they need a hearing aid, 91% do not have one. Given that hearing is one of the most prevalent conditions (12% of people with a disability), improving access to and use of hearing aids has the potential to considerably improve the daily functioning of many people living with a disability. Access to prosthetics is also very low in Indonesia. For people with a difficulty using their arms, fingers, legs or with a physical deformity who need prosthetics, on average across these categories of disability less than 25% of people who could benefit from having a prosthetic are able to access one. Policy has been hampered by a paucity of information about the specific barriers facing people with disabilities and how best to address them. There is, therefore, an urgent need for improved data and analysis.
Jakarta Post article based on this work: http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2017/11/09/give-equal-opportunities-to-citizens-with-disabilities.html
Women’s Transitions in the Labour Market around Marriage and Childbearing (with D. Contreras-Suarez). A Report prepared in collaboration with the Australian-Indonesian Partnership for Economic Governance and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Aug, 2017.
We investigate how women’s labour market experiences are affected by marriage and having children. We focus on transitions in and out of the labour market and examine how these transitions differ across industries, occupations and across the informal and formal sectors. We do this using the Indonesian Family Life Survey which allows us to follow the experience of thousands of women as they enter the labour market, get married and then have children. Not surprisingly, we find that married women and women with children have lower labour market participation than single women. Forty percent of the women who were working while single, have stopped working one year after marriage or one year after having their first child. For women aged 20 to 24, this represents 8.6 million women leaving the labour market, either for marriage or for first childbearing. This is a serious underutilisation of the country’s economic resources. Although some women later re-enter the labour market, there is still a large permanent net loss of women (13%). The main problem appears to be in the formal sector where 44% of women leave after marriage/child birth (compared to 20% in the informal sector), with only 6% of these women re-entering the labour market. It has been hypothesised that formal sector women turn to informal work once they have children as this allows more flexible time management and the ability to work at home. However, our ability to track women across time allows us to see that this is not the case. Very few women who were working in the formal sector take up self-employed work. In general there is very little movement of women across sectors, industries and occupations. Our main conclusion is that the work challenges Indonesian women face are similar to those experienced by women worldwide - that formal sector work places are set up in an inflexible fashion without women’s needs and family responsibilities in mind. The policy implication of this finding is that, like elsewhere, formal sector employers need to take an active role in accommodating female workers’ family responsibilities. Ways to do this include offering flexible work hours, part-time work and the provision of on-site child care. Research shows that by retaining female workers, turnover and training costs drop and productivity increases. Increased female labour force participation also generates economic growth as the country more effectively utilises and benefits from the skills of half of its population.
Women's Economic Participation in Indonesia (with D. Contreras-Suarez and B. Rowell). A Report prepared in collaboration with the Australian-Indonesian Partnership for Economic Governance and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, June, 2017.
This report presents a review of existing papers on the state of gender inequality in Indonesia. It also includes results of quantitative research on gender disparities in Indonesia which identifies the drivers of female labour force participation and gender wage gaps and tracks their progress over time.
The Double Burden of Malnutrition in SE Asia and the Pacific: Priorities, Policies and Politics (with L. Haddad and I. Barnett). Health Policy and Planning 2014, Oct 15, 1-14.
Coming out of a report prepared in collaboration with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The double burden of malnutrition is defined by the co-existence of serious levels of under- and overnutrition. Nowhere have overweight rates risen as fast as in the regions of South East Asia and the Pacific. The regions are also burdened with high and often stagnant levels of undernutrition. For countries for which data are available, the regions contain nearly half of the individuals, world wide, suffering from a double burden of malnutrition. This article reviews the trends and their consequences and for nine countries in these two regions it reviews the drivers of the problem and attempts to manage it. The article concludes with an analysis of the political challenges and opportunities presented by the double burden and some suggestions for a leadership agenda within the region to address it.
China's One Child Policy (with X. Meng). New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Online Edition, 2014. Palgrave Macmillan, UK.
Between 1979 and late 2013, China's One Child Policy restricted urban couples to having only one child. In this article we review the evidence on the policy's impact on population growth, as well as its largely unforeseen impacts on population aging, gender inequality, behaviour and values, and the economy. As a result of the policy, China's population is not only smaller than it would have been, but also aging rapidly. The burden of looking after elderly parents and grandparents now often falls on a single child. The policy, coupled with a strong cultural preference for sons and the availability of sex-selective abortion, has led to men significantly outnumbering women. Many men now find it difficult to find a wife. Women's scarcity has provided some benefits to women, for example, in terms of greater power within the household. The generation of only children produced by the policy has been shown to differ from previous generations, for example, being less pro-social and more risk-averse. Recent reforms to the policy allow urban couples in which at least one is an only child to now have two children. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this recent change.