Writer's note: Reading this article back amid debates over decile classifications, it is not appropriate to say that PKH solved Raskin's inclusion error and that it only suffers from an exclusion error. While both statements have some form of truth in them, the statistics used to explain the point are wrong. The 14 percent PKH and 22 percent Raskin figures are the total quota of Indonesian households covered under the program. This translates to 10 million PKH and 15.6 million Raskin households. By eligibility rules, deciles 1 through 4 (~28 million households) are eligible for PKH, whereas deciles 1 through 5 (~ 35 million households) are eligible for Raskin (https://x.com/anshory72/status/2089185041247301949/photo/1). This means that the government has set a quota lower than the total number of eligible households in Indonesia. This could have been a budget constraint issue or perhaps just mere institutional incapacity to distribute that much social aid.
For the exclusion and inclusion error numbers themselves, the numbers are much more staggering. Based on 2025 Susenas data, over 76 percent of PKH-eligible households and 74 percent of BPNT-eligible households were excluded from the program. On the other hand, over 46 percent of PKH-ineligible households and 36 percent of BPNT-ineligible households were incorrectly included in the program (https://iemonitorm-hu9hzzzgzjvysu7k8mmj2y.streamlit.app/).
Bottom line, proxy-means test are very faulty but are the best bet we have, especially when it is impossible to map the income distribution for every Indonesian in real-time. Hopefully the digital reforms to track granular data can better distribute these programs for the country’s neediest. If not, it may just be time to consider UBI
Writer's note: Reading this article back amid debates over decile classifications, it is not appropriate to say that PKH solved Raskin's inclusion error and that it only suffers from an exclusion error. While both statements have some form of truth in them, the statistics used to explain the point are wrong. The 14 percent PKH and 22 percent Raskin figures are the total quota of Indonesian households covered under the program. This translates to 10 million PKH and 15.6 million Raskin households. By eligibility rules, deciles 1 through 4 (~28 million households) are eligible for PKH, whereas deciles 1 through 5 (~ 35 million households) are eligible for Raskin (https://x.com/anshory72/status/2089185041247301949/photo/1). This means that the government has set a quota lower than the total number of eligible households in Indonesia. This could have been a budget constraint issue or perhaps just mere institutional incapacity to distribute that much social aid.
For the exclusion and inclusion error numbers themselves, the numbers are much more staggering. Based on 2025 Susenas data, over 76 percent of PKH-eligible households and 74 percent of BPNT-eligible households were excluded from the program. On the other hand, over 46 percent of PKH-ineligible households and 36 percent of BPNT-ineligible households were incorrectly included in the program (https://iemonitorm-hu9hzzzgzjvysu7k8mmj2y.streamlit.app/).
This is in combination with the fact that 16.5 million households are now jointly announced as PKH and BPNT recipients under the "Keluarga Penerima Manfaat" (KPM) label (https://setneg.go.id/baca/index/pemerintah_salurkan_bansos_pkh_dan_sembako_bagi_165_juta_keluarga).
Bottom line, proxy-means test are very faulty but are the best bet we have, especially when it is impossible to map the income distribution for every Indonesian in real-time. Hopefully the digital reforms to track granular data can better distribute these programs for the country’s neediest. If not, it may just be time to consider UBI
Semoga Pak Prabowo bisa melanjutkan program baik ini💪🏽 demi pertumbuhan ekonomi 8%🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩
Mantap sekali Indonesia jaya🇮🇩