In Data We Trust? An Analysis of Indonesian Socioeconomic Survey Data

Abstract

What if a popular dataset that has generated a large amount of literature has been misunderstood and has led to misleading inferences? This paper examines household expenditure data from the Indonesian National Socio-economic Survey (Susenas), which started more than 50 years ago. Appropriate use of Susenas data for policy analysis requires an understanding that the survey’s expenditure variable does not measure true out-of-pocket expenses, because it includes subsidies received by households when obtaining goods and services. We also highlight an abrupt change in the survey instrument that occurred in 2015, when the reference period for certain items was extended. For health items, this generated a change in the expenditure series that can be misinterpreted as being the result of a social health insurance reform introduced in 2014 to lower the health care burden on households. Accordingly, we propose a way to account for this artificial expenditure movement in Susenas.

Apa jadinya jika sebuah set data yang terkenal dan telah menghasilkan berbagai studi telah disalahartikan dan menghasilkan inferensi yang keliru? Tulisan ini menelaah data pengeluaran rumah tangga dari Survei Sosial Ekonomi Nasional Indonesia (Susenas) yang telah dimulai sejak 50 tahun lalu. Penggunaan yang tepat atas data Susenas untuk analisis kebijakan membutuhkan pemahaman bahwa variabel pengeluaran dalam survei tersebut sesungguhnya tidak menggambarkan pengeluaran yang sesungguhnya, karena ia mencakup subsidi yang diterima oleh rumah tangga saat membeli barang dan jasa. Penulis juga menyoroti perubahan mendadak pada instrumen survei di tahun 2015 dan berlaku hingga kini, di mana periode referensi untuk beberapa barang diperpanjang. Khususnya bagi pengeluaran kesehatan, perubahan ini menghasilkan perbedaan pada berbagai pengeluaran yang dapat diinterpretasikan sebagai dampak dari reformasi jaminan sosial kesehatan tahun 2014 untuk menurunkan beban perawatan kesehatan bagi rumah tangga. Sehubungan dengan itu, penulis mengusulkan satu cara untuk menyesuaikan data Susenas dengan pergerakan pengeluaran yang artifisial ini.

Keywords:

• survey data
• Indonesia
• health policy

JEL classification:

• C80
• I11

Notes

1 For assets that are fully owned, this information is not available. For assets that are being paid off, information about monthly payments may be available, but there is no information about the proportion paid.

2 However, we have not seen published material making such an approximation.

3 The average is the calculation of the total annual health cost in the 2015–16 that is converted to monthly or quarterly total health cost to approximate the reference period of surveys from 2014 and earlier.

4 https://bpjs-kesehatan.go.id/bpjs/dmdocuments/193afa146bdebb94f1a42aef5fdc606a.jpg and https://bpjs-kesehatan.go.id/bpjs/dmdocuments/986b66b0b19db2b565505225453d71de.pdf

5 Since JKN may have expanded health care demand, we also lowered the monthly zero-cost rate to 49%, but the result was very similar. External data sources (BPJS; World Bank) suggest that health care use has increased by about 1–3 percentage points in the JKN era. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/453091479269158106/pdf/110298-REVISED- PUBLIC-HFSA-Nov17-LowRes.pdf