Policy Brief: The impact of COVID-19 on child poverty and mobility in Indonesia

Highlights

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and measures to contain it have plunged the world economy into a severe contraction. The International Monetary Fund projects that the global economy will shrink by 4.4 per cent in 2020 – the deepest recession since the Second World War.

The crisis is having a significant impact on Indonesia’s economic growth and efforts to reduce poverty. To avert this worst-case scenario, the Government of Indonesia implemented an emergency fiscal stimulus package and temporarily expanded its social assistance programmes to support low-income families during the crisis.

This policy brief explores how the economic shocks resulting from COVID-19 affect child poverty and the success of social protection measures aimed at mitigating the impact. The analysis was conducted using a dynamic microsimulation model designed to forecast indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals, which was built using Indonesia’s national socio-economic survey (Susenas) and macro-economic projections from the Fiscal Policy Agency of the Ministry of Finance.