COMMUNITY BEHAVIOR TOWARD SOCIAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS: A SECONDARY-DATA ANALYSIS OF TARGETING ACCURACY, DEPENDENCY, AND MISUSE IN INDONESIA'S PKH AND BPNT PROGRAMS

Abstract

Social assistance programs such as Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH, the Family Hope Program) and Bantuan Pangan Non Tunai (BPNT, Non-Cash Food Assistance) are central instruments of Indonesia's poverty-reduction policy. The effectiveness of these programs, however, depends heavily on how recipient and prospective-recipient households behave toward eligibility rules, program duration, and beneficiary registration. This study analyzes three dimensions of community behavior toward social assistance — targeting accuracy, welfare dependency, and potential misuse — using secondary data drawn from Indonesia's integrated social-welfare database, national beneficiary records for PKH/BPNT, and statistics published by the National Development Planning Agency, the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the Central Statistics Agency (BPS). A descriptive quantitative approach is applied, combining documentary analysis of official reports with cross-tabulation of publicly available beneficiary statistics. The findings indicate that national targeting accuracy for BPNT has been estimated at only 47.46 percent, with an inclusion error of 71.04 percent, meaning a large share of registered beneficiaries no longer meet, or never met, eligibility criteria, while many eligible households remain excluded. Evidence from independent-graduation (graduasi mandiri) policy implementation shows persistently slow exit rates at the local level, alongside a national acceleration target of 300,000 graduating families in 2026 following 77,000 graduations in 2025, indicating a structural tendency toward long-term dependency. Cross-checked data with the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center further reveal that indicated online-gambling activity has become one of the recognized grounds for removing beneficiaries, pointing to a distinct pattern of behavioral misuse. The study concludes that Indonesia's transition from the former integrated welfare database to the new single socioeconomic database, organized by welfare decile, offers a stronger institutional basis for correcting targeting errors, but that dependency and misuse remain governance challenges requiring stronger verification, graduation incentives, and cross-agency data synchronization.