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Parental Investment and Poverty Dynamics in West Java, Indonesia

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Abstract

This research traced the lives of 240 individuals who were husbands and wives (married to each other) from 120 families in order to better comprehend the factors that shaped their socioeconomic conditions. Stratified random sampling was used to select participants from four subdistricts in West Java, Indonesia, which represented both rural and urban areas. Multinomial logistic regression was used to investigate factors associated with participants’ poverty dynamic status. The results revealed that different patterns of mobility and persistence of poverty are found in urban and rural areas. In general, family of origin played an important role in determining the welfare status of individuals through parental investment in children’s human capital. This is especially evident in relation to parental investment behavior in early childhood and formal education.

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Notes

  1. The family of orientation poverty status cutoff based on the family history index was arbitrary and depended on researcher judgment. Further study is needed to create a valid and reliable instrument. Furthermore, more analysis is required to create an appropriate index for different characteristics of each area, as the general livelihood of the society is strongly related to the ecological characteristics of the area.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Higher Education Directory, Ministry of Education and Culture, Republic of Indonesia, through a university decentralization research grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Behavioral Sciences Department, Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN, USA

    Agus Surachman

  2. Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, Faculty of Human Ecology, Bogor Agricultural University, Bogor, Indonesia

    Hartoyo

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  1. Agus Surachman
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  2. Hartoyo
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Correspondence to Agus Surachman.

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Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Surachman, A., Hartoyo Parental Investment and Poverty Dynamics in West Java, Indonesia. J Fam Econ Iss 36, 340–352 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-015-9454-3

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