National Beneficiaries Research Articles

The Impact of Rastra-BPNT Assistance on Household Food Expenditure Patterns and Poverty Status in Indonesia

This study uses Susenas March 2019 raw data in a cross-section of 34 provinces and 514 districts/cities in Indonesia with a coverage of 315,672 households, designed using a quasi-experiment on the treatment group and control group after program implementation. The treatment group was formed by beneficiary families while the control group was formed by non-beneficiary families. The sample of beneficiaries was 50,485 or 9,845,922 households if calculated with Susenas weighting (65.55% of the total 2019 realization of 15,020,323 national beneficiaries) and non-beneficiaries were 181,358 households. The data were analyzed using a probit regression model and impact estimation was conducted using the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) approach. The results suggest that education level is a bigger determinant for households to become Rastra-BPNT beneficiaries, especially for household heads who did not finish primary school and those who graduated from primary school. Rastra-BPNT food social assistance has a significant and positively correlated impact on beneficiary families with a pattern of food proportion to total expenditure > 50%. There was a shift in the food consumption budget share for Beneficiary Families in several dominant commodities such as grains; eggs and milk; processed food and beverages; and cigarettes, tobacco and betel. The distribution of Rastra-BPNT from November 2018 to February 2019 can reduce the gap between household groups, but there are still errors in the distribution of benefits.

English

The overall objective of the study was to map trees outside forest (TOF) in croplands, and their contribution to the supply of ecosystem services for local and national beneficiaries using participatory research, Google Earth and ArcMap in Ghana, as the case study area. A satellite image available from Google Earth was used to map croplands, and ArcMap was used to calculate the local and national ecosystem service hot spot areas based on the values assigned to each TOF individuals. The research identified and mapped a total of 786 TOF individuals and 50 TOF species in 147 ha of croplands in the study area. Ficus exasperate, Morinda lucida, Ceiba pentandra, Spathodea campanulata, Mangifera indica, Sterculia tragacantha, Funtumia elastic, Ficus carpensis, Vernonia amygdalina and Trilipisium madagascariense were the top ten most dominant species in terms of species occurrence. Fifteen different local ecosystem services supplied by TOF species, and the hotspot areas were identified and mapped. The total carbon stored by all 786 TOF in 147 ha of the study area was 759 tons of carbon. The most important TOF species and hotspot locations that require special planning, conservation, and management focus were identified and mapped. There was a poor correlation between the importance and location of the key species for local and national beneficiaries which might lead to a conflict of interest and illegal tree felling. Key words: Trees in croplands, geographic information system (GIS), ecosystem benefits, beneficiaries, tree management.