Minimizing the Impact of Economic Crises for Indonesian By Using Social Protection Programs

Indonesia has implemented social protection to mitigate negative impacts of the crises and reduce poverty level. In addition, social protection in Indonesia is also intended to mitigate negative impacts of economic policies. The government claimed that those programs were very effective to cope with the impacts of the crises but many critics argued that those programs would only create dependency and lack of educational values, add more burdens to the state budget, ineffective in the long term to reduce poverty and vulnerability, and politicized because of miss-targeting, miss-management, and moral hazards such as corruption and abuse. This paper will examine the role of social protection programs in Indonesia, especially their role to mitigate the negative impacts of economic crises and the implementation of economic policies, by using Indonesian data and experience to examine social and demographic changes. The aim of this paper is to provide a holistic framework so that the multiple and often conflicting demand currently placed on managing poverty and other demographic problems issues as an impact of economic crises can be assessed systematically. This framework can hopefully resolve the Indonesian poverty problems and secure the Indonesia’s economy by reducing vulnerability, inequality and poverty.