Anne Booth

Initial conditions and miraculous growth : why is South East Asia different from Taiwan and South Korea

The 1990s saw an explosion of work on the fast-growing economies of East and Southeast Asia, by individual scholars as well as international development institutions. Influential books, by Amsden (1989) and Wade (1990), as well as the work of Johnson (1982, 1995), have explored the nature of the East Asian developmental state, and especially the role of government in determining the allocation of resources to particular industries, in building infrastructure and in the development of the educational system. The widely discussed report published by the World Bank (1993a) on the East Asian ‘Miracle’ endeavoured to draw lessons, not just from the experience of Japan, Taiwan and Korea, but also from four fast-growing economies in Southeast Asia-Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The recent growth experience of China was also discussed. This report and the large literature which it generated have tended to convey the impression that the huge area of the world which the term ‘East Asia’ embraces have all experienced rapid economic growth over the last three decades, and that from their experience, a coherent set of ‘lessons’ can be drawn for less successful economies in other parts of the world.1

The Indonesian economy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries : a history of missed opportunities

List of Tables - List of Figures - Preface - Introduction - Output Growth and Structural Change: 1820-1990 - Living Standards and the Distribution of Income - Government and the Economy - The Impact of International Trade - Investment and Technological Change - Markets and Entrepreneurs - Conclusions - Index

Counting The Poor in Indonesia

A confusing aspect of the now rather large literature on trends in poverty in Indonesia in the New Order period is that virtually every study has used a different poverty line concept; indeed, even the World Bank appears to have used different poverty lines in different published studies and unpublished reports Unlike the government of Malaysia, for example, the Indonesian government has not chosen to promulgate a poverty line in its official planning documents, and successive Five Year Development Plans have had very little to say about poverty trends. However, the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) has in recent years put forward its own poverty line concept which has been used to estimate numbers in poverty in urban and rural areas, and these estimates have been published for some years in the annual Indikator Kesejahteraan Rakyat [Welfare Indicators]. Although the BPS estimates are now widely quoted in Indonesia, they have not won universal acceptance, and other authors continue to use other poverty l...

Introduction and Context

In 1990, following several years of pressure from humanitarian pressure groups and others disturbed by the human consequences of structural adjustment, the World Bank published a World Development Report (WDR) on poverty (World Bank 1990). Unlike the usual run of such Reports, this one did not serve purely to illustrate a theme in international development, but turned out to have a resonance which went far beyond its immediate context. The report became a basis for a range of policy changes which have altered the practice not only of the World Bank but of all development agencies. The Bank initiated, in poorer developing countries, a data-gathering effort (the Social Dimensions of Adjustment surveys) which, for the first time, made annual data on poverty in developing countries publicly available. World Bank office memoranda of 1991 and 1992, backed by a Poverty Reduction Handbook (World Bank 1993) placed poverty reduction at the head of the World Bank’s priorities, and forbade the giving of adjustment loans to countries which did not already have an agreed poverty strategy in place. But also, far more than in the case of the previous Bank initiative in poverty reduction, by Robert MacNamara in the second half of the 1970s (Ayres 1980) this initiative has been emulated by many other development agencies. Several OECD countries, including Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland and most recently Great Britain (United Kingdom 1997) have now also given priority to poverty reduction among their development objectives, and the International Development Targets announced by the OECD in 1996 began with a commitment to halve the number of individuals in extreme poverty by 2015.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF NON-FARM ACTIVITIES IN AGRICULTURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN INDONESIA: SOME INSIGHTS FROM THE AGRICULTURAL CENSUSES

The literature on off-farm sources of income in rural areas of developing countries continues to grow. This paper uses data from the household income surveys carried out as part of the 1983 and 1993 agricultural censuses to explore aspects of the changing role of off-farm income sources for agricultural households in different parts of Indonesia. The paper examines variations in the ratio of off-farm to total agricultural household income by holding size, by total household income class and by province. It also examines the linkages between on-farm and off-farm income growth. Comparisons are made with findings from other parts of Asia and elsewhere in the developing world.

Irrigation in Indonesia part

* The author is greatly indebted to officials in the Department of Public Works for providing useful information and Professor Leon Mears for many penetrating comments. The staff of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Library in Singapore were particularly helpful in providing access to historical sources. Officials of the IBRD, USAID and the ADC also assisted with provision of data. All responsibility for interpretation rests with the author.

Measuring Living Standards in Different Colonial Systems: Some Evidence from South East Asia, 1900–1942

This paper investigates the evidence on living standards in colonial economies, with particular reference to South East Asia in the decades from 1900 to 1942. Various measures are investigated, including availability of basic needs, demographic indicators, especially mortality rates, anthropometric measures and wage data. The paper concludes that in spite of the growth in GDP which occurred in most parts of the region between 1900 and 1940, improvements in living standards were modest, and by the late 1930s most colonies had low educational enrolments and high mortality rates. The Philippines had probably the highest living standards in the region, using educational indicators, mortality rates and per capita GDP estimates. But even in the Philippines rice availability per capita was low, and nutritional levels among some segments of the population were also below acceptable standards.

IPEDA–Indonesia's Land Tax∗

* The article is based on the results of fifteen months fieldwork in Indonesia visiting Ipeda Offices and kabupaten, kecamatan and desa in Java, South Sulawesi, Lampung, South, West. and North Sumatra and Bali. The author is grateful to the staff of the Ipeda Directorate, Ministry of Finance, and to the numerous local government officials who showed much kindness and patience in supplying data and information.

Government and Welfare in the New Republic: Indonesia in the 1950s

When Indonesia finally received de jure independence in December 1949, the infant republic faced a range of serious problems, but nowhere were the problems more pressing than in the field of economic policy. In contrast with the Philippines and India, where the USA and Britain had honoured previous commitments and granted independence in 1946 and 1947 respectively, the refusal of the Netherlands to recognise the 1945 declaration of independence had led to four years of bitter and destructive fighting. Infrastructure on Java and elsewhere, already damaged during the Japanese occupation, deteriorated further after 1945, and by the end of the decade most of the important export industries were producing only a small fraction of their pre-1942 output. Smallholder agricultural output in Java was also well below pre-1942 levels. De Vries observed that many seed farms had been destroyed, irrigation systems had not been maintained and “vast areas of hill country” had been damaged by soil erosion. In the final years of the Japanese occupation, the Japanese army commandeered large amounts of rice, while the widespread issue of Japanese banknotes caused mounting inflation. Food was scarce everywhere and those with little or no land were most severely hit; most demographers concur that the population actually declined in Java after 1943, indicating a sharp increase in mortality.

The Agricultural Surveys, 1970–75

* The author wishes to thank Mrs Sri Boedianti of the Central Bureau of Statistics, Jakarta, for taking time to discuss the Survey Pertaman and for providing the additional publications published jointly with the Badan Pengendah Bimas (Bimas Control Board)