Poverty

Poverty in the US and Indonesia

By Tuti Alawiyah

Jeffrey, a high school student, planned to go to college. His grade and class rank were good enough to support his aim to go to university. Then, he was accepted at a university that he applied for. However, because the financial aids package could not cover the entire cost of his study and his parents cannot afford help him in solving the payment problem, Jeffrey decided for withdrawing his intention to go to college and then joining his father to work at a factory. By taking this decision, he could help his two siblings who lived with his parent (Hagemeister and Mackie 2007, p. 297). This is a story of a student in the United States who is not able to pay for studying at college and he never earns a college degree.

A similar story often happened in other place, a developing country, Indonesia. Many high school students cannot go to college because lack of financial support. Poverty and other social problems (health service, unemployment, mother and child mortality rates, and infectious disease) are faced by developing countries such as Indonesia. This paper aims to explore poverty issues in the US and Indonesia. Three things will be examined in this paper: perspectives and conception of poverty; social welfare policies and programs in the two countries; and the role of social workers in the war against poverty programs.

Before examining poverty issues in the US and Indonesia, it is important to describe the portrait of socio-economic situation in Indonesia and the US. This data come from the international survey World2007. Both countries have slightly similar number of population. The United States is the third biggest population in the world after China and India with 301139947 populations, while Indonesia is the fourth biggest population in the world after the US. Although two countries have somewhat similar population, per capita GDP of both countries has a huge difference (the US is $ 44,000; and Indonesia is $ 3,900).

In terms of poverty and social problems, to some extent, both countries face the same problems such as poverty and HIV-Aids. Population below poverty line in Indonesia is 18 percent, while in the US is 12 percent. The US and Indonesia have the same situation regarding HIV-Aids, although the US face a worse situation. The deaths rate in the US are 17011, while in Indonesia are 2400 a year. People are living with HIV-Aids patients in Indonesia are 110000, while in the US are 950000.

Other problems are worse in Indonesia than the US. Unemployment rate in Indonesia is 13 percent, while in the US is 5 percent. Unnourished person as total percentage of total population in Indonesia is 6 percent. Maternal mortality deaths per 100,000 live births in Indonesia are high, 230 persons; while in the US are 17 persons. Indonesia also is suffering from infectious disease such as tuberculosis; with the death rate per 100000 are 46.

Perspectives and Conception on Poverty

There are three explanations why poverty does exist in the book chapter by Hagemeister and Mackie (2007): individual explanation, cultural explanation, and structural explanation. Individual explanation suggests that people cannot succeed in their life because of “personal failing” such as genetic inferiority. Other say that people are poor because they fail to function effectively due to psychological reasons such as unmotivated, lazy, and irresponsible. However, Hagemeister and Mackie pointed out that social workers do not believe in the individual explanation that people are genetically inferior to another. They also mentioned that research do not support the psychological explanation on why people are poor.

Cultural explanation states that poverty exists because there is a “culture of poverty”. The proponent of this idea, Oscar Lewis (1959) mentioned four categories of culture of poverty. 1) People do not belong to social, professional and community organizations; 2) People live in communities that lack of organizations and activities beyond the family. In this community, they suffer from lower quality of public services, school and lack of safety; 3) Family fail to socialize children, make them healthy and active adults; 4) Individual conduct. Poor people typically have weak egos, poor impulse control, and fatalism.

Edward Benfield (1970), another proponent of cultural perspective, divided two groups of poor people: 1) Those who temporarily out of work: people with disabilities and divorce women with children. This kind of poverty can be recovered. 2) “The permanent lower-class”. This group is lack of motivation or desire to improve their poor condition.

Structural explanation is different from those individual and cultural perspectives. This view explains poverty by looking at the failing of the larger social and economic systems, including the capitalist marketplace and social welfare systems. Their poverty is not because they are lazy, irresponsible, or lack of motivation, but because of the fail of social, political and economic structure to provide poor people with social welfare in the society. The proponent of this perspective tries to understand the poverty problems by seeking the political, social and economic problems that contribute to poverty.

The case of Jeffrey as mentioned earlier, according to the structural perspectives, is “a trap that is difficult to escape”. Jeffrey’s parents do not have a high education and resources, the situation that different from Jeffrey’s classmate, Susan, who has parents that hold a college degree and have enough financial support. Both their parents have the same aspiration to give a good education for their children, but their education and economic situation are different.

In Indonesia, many poor people are hard workers who go to work in early morning and come home in the late night. However, they still have a hard time to make a living. They cannot go to a doctor or hospital if their family members are sick. They cannot pursue a school for their children. This situation can be easily found in poor urban and sub-urban area. They usually live in a very poor condition with lack of clean water and other social services. To explain this poverty, people cannot be easily judging them as lazy or unmotivated people, as individual perspective does. It is also hard to say that because they come from family who cannot educate their children become healthy, empowered and active adults. The best explanation to understand why they are poor are by examining the socio-economic, and political system that make the market unfair, regulate the market that give more benefit to certain group of people. In this context, social worker can help the poor people by making a fairer regulation in a macro level that involve lobby, policy analysis, and research.

Social Welfare Programs

Poverty, both in the developed countries such as the US or in the developing countries such as Indonesia need to be alleviated. Both countries have the same programs, social welfare that seeks to minimize the number of people who live below poverty line. The United States, categorized as a rich country with per capita gdp $ 44.000, should have a better way to solve poverty problems. There are several programs to address this issue. In the President F. D. Roosevelt era, he came up with antipoverty programs: the Federal Emergency Relief Act (1933) and the Social Security Act (1935). The first one is public assistance and the second one is social insurance. This public assistance program continued to the era of John F. Kennedy until 1960s, the social welfare programs included, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Head Starts; Food Stamps; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; Medicare; and Medicaid.

When President Bill Clinton elected in 1992, the AFDC program was changed to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) that limited the assistance to five years and require the families to increase work. This changes happened because the number of poor families who receive AFDC program are growing.

In Indonesia, there are several programs to address poverty issues. After economic crisis hit Asia in 1998, Indonesia is suffering from this situation. Many people are unemployed and the poor people become poorer. Indonesian government launched Social Safety Net Programs that give people a cash money with requirement to work in the community or neighbourhoods. Several years later, this program is changed by other programs in 2005: The School Operational Assistance (BOS) for education and Direct Cash Support (Bantuan Langsung Tunai) for poor family. Research from Smeru Research Institute found that BOS program give more benefit, especially to poor children who cannot access education. This program make almost all elementary and middle schools are free of charge. Regarding the second program, some people criticize that the amount of money from Direct Cash Support are not balance with the high price of foods and other goods.

The Role of Social Workers

Social workers in every place including the US and Indonesia try to help poor people because they have rights to get education, health service, and other basic needs. In Indonesian Constitution, it is mentioned that all people have the same rights to get education, economic support, and health services. In Indonesia, in the context of fulfilling these rights, social workers are badly needed by the community. Social workers help disenfranchised people enhance their ability for social functioning and create social circumstance that support people’s access to social services (NASW, 2007).

In addressing poverty and other social problems, social workers in the early period in the United States worked close to alleviating the poverty. However, social workers now tend to shift their concern to jobs that more clinical. According to the Hagemeister and Mackie (2007), this does not mean that social workers abandoned the poverty issues, the social workers remain at the frontlines of the war against poverty. Social workers, for example, address childhood poverty. They help children succeed academically, prevent them from delinquency, ensure the low-family income to have nutritious diets and eligible for Medicaid. Social workers also help young people learn skill and work habits that are important to have stable employment.

Conclusion

A comparative study of poverty between the United States and Indonesia is interesting because both countries have slightly similar number of population -- the third and the fourth largest population in the world. However, both countries have very huge different in terms of per capita GDP because Indonesia is a developing country and the United States is a developed country. Both countries face the same issues of poverty and other social problems. Different from the United States that has many social welfare programs, Indonesia has very limited programs to alleviate poverty because of its lack of economic and social resources.

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Reference

Hagemeister, A. K. and Mackie, P. F. (2007). Poverty in the United States: History, explanations, and Opportunities for Social Work. In Social work issues and opportunities in a challenging profession. DiNitto, D.M. and McNeese, C. A. (Ed.). Lycheum Book, Inc, Chicago, IL. p. 285-309.

The CIA 2007 world fact book from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/; The United Nations Common Database from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_help/cdb_quick_start.asp

Suharyo, W. I. and Widyanti W. The School operational assistance (BOS) and the poor’s access to basic education. In Smeru Newsletter, No. 19 Jul-Sept 2006 from www.smeru.or.id.