Work on Progress

Abstract

We investigate the prevalence of asset misreporting in Indonesia where self-reported information is used to determine eligibility to welfare programs. Using a de-identified household surveys linked with the welfare targeting administrative database, we constructed a unique data set to study the prevalence of misreporting and the relation of asset misreporting with various indicators at the household and village level. Exploiting a randomisation of questionnaire questions during the census of the poor we provide evidence of misreporting of luxury assets. Further, we find that being male and having higher economic status are positively correlated with their asset misreporting. Households living in villages with higher social disorder and lack of authority presence are associated with higher dishonest behaviour. We also find that asset misreporting is not associated with economic shocks that households experienced. Asset misreporting prevalence are therefore reflecting the rent seeking behaviour of slightly wealthier participants driven by the competitive feature of the welfare benefit.

Abstract

This paper analyzes enrollment, attendance, and dropout effect estimates following the reforms in Cash transfer for Students (Beasiswa Siswa Miskin - BSM) program in Indonesia. More specifically, we investigate the effect of anticipated cash transfer to enrollment decisions in secondary school. By making use of a unique panel data of poor children who were transitioning from primary school to Secondary schooling in 2013, we exploit variation in the timing of receiving Social protection (SP) /BSM card to isolate the impact of receiving the cards to poor children school enrollment. Our finding shows that receiving the card before the school registration period ends has increased the likelihood of poor students to be enrolled at the junior high school by 6.6 percent. Further robustness check affirms that heterogeneity in results is negligible and consistent with the primary model being observed.

Abstract

We report the effect of receiving welfare transfer programs may improve bargaining power of the wife of the household head, and in turn, may influence the wife’s independency in making decision especially on health and education related issues of their children. Using panel data from the baseline and endline surveys of the Indonesian CCT program (Program Keluarga Harapan / PKH) we track both recipient and non-recipient households whose wife of the household head responds to the related questionnaires. We develop several econometric models to estimate the effect of receiving PKH on the wife’s ability to decide things related to her children’s health and education related decisions, taking into consideration the Randomised Control Trial (RCT) design and endogeneity of PKH variable for PKH impact evaluation. We find that the wife receiving PKH have a higher probability in making the independent decisions than the non-recipients.