The Jakarta chapter of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) yesterday released new statistics on the percentage of the capital’s population still living below the poverty line.
According to their data, as of March 2016, 3.75% of Jakarta’s population live below the poverty line, which translates to 384,300 people. The figure is an increase from September 2015, which was the last time BPS gathered data on poverty levels in the capital.
“There was an increase of 15,630 people or 0.14%,” said BPS Jakarta Social Statistics Department Head Sri Santo Budi Muliatinah, as quoted by Kompas yesterday.
However, Sri noted that the increase can be explained by the government’s raising of the poverty threshold from Rp 503,308 per capita per month to Rp 510,359 per capita per month in March.
On a national level, despite the increase in the poverty threshold, there was a slight decrease of the number of people living below the poverty line, going down from 28.51 million people in September 2015 to 28.01 million in March 2016.
