Internal Migration and Poverty: A Lesson Based on Panel Data Analysis from Indonesia

Abstract

Internal migration in Indonesia has officially been recognized since 1930 when the country was still a Dutch colony (World Population Year 1974). It was historically a kind of forced migration initiated to redistribute the population over the country—that is, a form of transmigration (Hugo 2004). The government then had a programme to shift the population from the most densely inhabited area of Java to other less populated islands to improve the overall welfare of the ‘transmigrants’ as most of them were poor farmers. During the later decades, more and more people have been migrating voluntarily across areas in the country. This is a result of the massive restructuring and transformation of the economy as well as for other reasons.