How to Ease the Burden of Poor Household ? : The Role of Raskin Program

The aims of this study is to investigate whether Raskin program can ease the burden of rice expenditure of poor household. The investigation are based on expenditure analysis. This research uses the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas) data on households with 15,852 observations. Regression in all region indicates that Raskin program are significant to ease the burden of rice expenditure but the effect is relatively small. In the regions where the percentage Raskin was lower than rice expenditure, Raskin expenditure can ease the burden of rice expenditure but the efeect is very small so we did not found significant evidence. Nevertheless in the province of Maluku, Papua and Papua barat, where the percentage Raskin was higher than the rice expenditure, the role of Raskin actually increase rice spending. However, the effect is relatively small so that there the effect is not significant. In addition, the Raskin program also consequently causes the households' total expenditures to increase. One of such causes is increased expenditures for foodstuffs containing meat and non-meat, and fruits.