Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture No. 2/07
Indicator based poverty assessment for rural Central Sulawesi
Xenia van Edig and Stefan Schwarze
University of Goettingen, Germany
Manfred Zeller
University of Hohenheim, Germany
Abstract
Poverty reduction is one of the challenges of international
development cooperation and necessitates the development of instruments
which ease the identification of the poor as a target group.
This study aims to identify sets of indicators for poverty prediction
in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, in order to facilitate the development
of low-cost, time-saving and easy-to-implement poverty assessment
tools.
In the analysis two models with different initial sets of indicators
and different types of regressions are tested. In the first model
(Model 1), all variables derived from the composite questionnaire can
be included in the model. In the second model (Model 2), only variables
which are ranked as easy to verify are included. Ordinary least square
regression as well as quantile regression are used. The econometric
analysis shows that the regression analysis presented in this study
offers good possibilities to find suitable indicators for poverty
prediction in Central Sulawesi. When both models are compared in terms
of their accuracy performance, a trade-off between accuracy and
practicability is found.
Keywords: poverty assessment, poverty indicators, Indonesia, Central Sulawesi
JEL: I32, R15
Vol. 46 (2007), No. 2: 145-158