The Effect of Education Level on Poverty

          Many factors affects poverty in a region. According to Tambunan (2001,p200), a lot of factors that affect poverty both directly and indirectly such as the rate of growth of output or labor productivity, the level of net wages, income distribution, employement opportunities, the rate of inflation, use of technologies, the level and type of education, physical condition and the nature of an area, work ethic and motivation to work, culture or tradition, politics, natural disaster and war.

          For developing countries, education is the most preferred thing. Education is the most important thing for every nation, especially for Indonesia. A nation will emerge from the downturn and achieve prosperity if the citizens are provided with they good education. The higher the level of education of each person, will makes them easier to get a job and decent life so that the country would be far from the ‘poor’ word. But not all Indonesia’s citizens are able to get a decent education. Education level needs to be improved because it affects the economy in Indonesia. Here are my explanation about why the education level in Indonesia affects its poverty.

          According to Soerjani (1987), poverty is a social problem that is not familiar for the people of Indonesia since independece up to now. The number of poor people-the population with per capita per month below the poverty line in March 2016 in Indonesia based on the data  BPS or Badan Pusat Statistika (2016, July) reached 28.01 million or equivalent to 10.86 percent of the total population of Indonesia. Poverty is a condition where a person's inability to meet the basic needs of their lives, so this results in the disruption of their physical and mental health. According to Tambunan (2015,p106) there are three ways to measure poverty: Absolute, relative and cultural poverty. Absolute poverty is a condition where someone can’t fulfill their needs such as clothes, food, home or education. Relative poverty is a condition where someone above the poverty line but they under the poverty line than the people surrounding. Cultural poverty is a condition where people won’t change their condition although they get help from others. Poverty became the focus of attention for the goverment of Indonesia. There are various govermental efforts that had been already implemented and will be implemented by the govement to solve this poverty problem. Many of them are successful but there are also many that failed. Though the number of poor population has decreased but there are so many people that still live under poverty line. As explained on the first paragraph, one of poverty factors is caused by low level of education. For now, gaining a good and high education needs a very high cost and money and it makes the weak economical society not able to afford and fulfill it all. As a result, many of them can’t get a good level of education and they only can get low education level. Even many childern can’t go to school because their parents don’t have enough money to pay the school fees that’s not cheap. Because for them, getting a food is a difficult thing, moreover if they should pay the school fees.

          According to Tambunan (2015,p112), education formal is one of important factors of poverty. We can’t see it only from its level, but also the quality. But, the truth is to get an education is not easy in our country. Except for rich people. Because most of them with enough money that they have, they could finish school until graduation and get a job, so rich people still rich because they will get money from their job. While in our country, those who live under poverty are still many. The thing that they face in education problem is high number of dropouts of poor people when they are going to continue from elementary school to junior school. Moreover the thing that become the main problem is lack of access to continue from junior school to senior school. Limited financial access due to the high financial cost makes poor people hard to continue their education. If this problem still happens, a lot of poor people will never get a decent education and it will impact for their future life where they will be difficult to get a job. It will make them unemployed and dont get enough money to fulfill all their needs. This problem is called poverty. Because nowadays, a good education is really important to find a job, both inside and outside the country. The higher of level education, the easier for us to get a job too. The low of education level that people have with poverty has a close relation.

            We need to make an improvement on school access and school affordability for poor people. It is important for the people and the goverment to work together to focus their attention in reducing poverty that happen especially in villages where they face. Besides, most of them think that education is not an important thing. This problem makes them get motivation crisis and willingness to get an education and it makes education quality of village people is low. Therefore, it needs an effort in increasing people is awareness especially villagers that education is really important to prepare a good nation generation. There are a lot of ways to improve the education in our country such as organize education in all regions, economic development, leader training, open jobs, capital assistance and others projects. The level of education has an impact on economy in Indonesia, we should  support and do all the good goverment programs in education and always seek goverment progams, so the education problem in our country can be reduced and poverty can be eradicated.

References

Soerjani, Mohamad. (1987). Lingkungan: Sumber Daya Alam dan Kependudukan dalam Pembangunan. Jakarta: Penerbit Universitas Indonesia (UI-Press).

Tambunan, T.T. (2001). Perekonomian Indonesia: teori dan temuan empiris. Jakarta: Ghalia Indonesia.

Tambunan, T. T. (2015). Perekonomian Indonesia . Bogor: Ghalia Indonesia.

(2016-07-18). Persentase Penduduk Miskin Maret 2016 Mencapai 10,86 Persen. Retrieved from         

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