The social and economic impact of COVID-19 on households in Indonesia

Highlights

By September 2022, COVID-19 had infected over six million people and resulted in more than 150,000 deaths. In the third quarter of 2021, economic activity was disrupted when the government of Indonesia was compelled to enact strict public health measures (called PPKM), as the Delta variant ravaged the country and took the lives of more than 1,700 individuals each day. To avoid pushing more families into economic precarity, the government increased its social protection budget by IDR 5.6 trillion (approximately USD 376 million).

The good sign, Indonesia’s economy rebounded in the second quarter of 2021 with GDP growth of 7.07% – higher than its pre-pandemic level. However, the serious outbreak of the Delta variant saw growth halve in the third quarter before it picked up again in late 2021 to early 2022, at which time the information for this report was gathered.

Since the onset of the pandemic, UNICEF, UNDP, Prospera and the SMERU Research Institute, with advice and support from the Ministry of Finance and Statistics Indonesia (BPS), have collaborated to appraise the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19. The first household survey, conducted between October and November 2020, included 12,216 nationally representative households across all 34 provinces, the largest survey on the impact of COVID-19 and focused on children and vulnerable groups. A second survey was conducted between February and March 2022 at the request of the Indonesian Ministry of Finance and with inputs from a wide range of government partners captured panel/longitudinal data from the same households: 10,922 in total, representing 89% of those surveyed in 2020. Beside revealed the benefits and gaps in social protection programs, individual information about children and working-age household members was also collected.

This report, then, paints a picture of how households in Indonesia coped two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, with a special focus on children, women, people with disability, and communities in vulnerable positions as well as includes policy guidance for inclusive recovery and resilience amid uncertainty.