Abstract
Poverty rate is still found to be around two times higher in rural areas. However, excesive urbanization, has increased the number of slums in urban areas. Thus, informal economic sectors and poverty will probably become more urbanized in the future. The main purpose of this article is to study the profiles, causes and livelihood strategies of urban poor households in small islands city. Mixed methods of survey, field observation and focus group discussions including in-depth interview by using questionnaire instruments were used to obtain data from 200 selected households. Findings suggest that the profiles of urban poor households have been identified in terms of social demographic, household economic expenditure and urban poverty rate and living standard indicators. Then, the significant causes of urban poverty have been examined as internal and external factors. Internal factors are cultural and structural-including the number of family members, women-headed household and poverty status. External factors are geographical poverty traps, including distance to city center, sanitation status and misused of government policy on rice for the poor program. Livelihood strategies of urban poor households are occupational multiplicity to reduce risks and uncertainty.
Highlights
The current development issue in Indonesia is poverty
Ambon city island was used by the Dutch company, i.e. Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), as the business center of spices collection in the whole Maluku and north Maluku regions including Ambon-Lease, Seram, Buru, Banda island
Ambon island is a small island with size around 743 km2 with hilly topography land that is grown by multiple mix cropping of forest, agriculture and integrated with coastal zone areas, which is called dusun systems
Summary
The current development issue in Indonesia is poverty. Center Board of Satistic(CBS) or Badan Pusat Statistik [1] stated that national poverty rate decreased gradually from 18.2% in 2002 into 11.25% in 2014. It was estimated that 18% (20 million) of the poor live in urban areas [2], the dynamic of poverty shows that declining number of people from poor to non-poor is followed by the increasing number of people from not poor to poor household at the same year [3]. Economic growth was followed by social economic inequality from 0.35 to 0.41 in the last two decades, between eastern and western part of Indonesia.
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