Good Times and Bad Times in Rural Java (review)

During the 1990's, several emerging market economies experienced economic crises. Although the origins of the crises were debated extensively in the literature, their impacts on welfare were not discussed a lot. However, the impact of economic policies or shocks on welfare is one of the most important issues in economics.

"Good times and bad times in rural Java" is a micro field study of socio-economic dynamics in two villages, North Subang and East Cirebon, along the coast of West Java towards the end of the twentieth century. It discusses the impacts of Krismon, the 1997-1998 economic crisis, on employment and welfare in the rural vicinity. The main question the book tries to answer is what has happened to the livelihood of its inhabitants since the outbreak of krismon? The authors have a sound motivation to study the impact of krismon on employment and welfare; "The causes of the Asian economic crisis have been the subject of fierce debates among economists, however little is known about the impact on employment and well-being."

Since most of the studies on work and welfare are macro-level analyses based on statistics generated by huge sample surveys and conducted at the national level, this book attempts an ambitious task of analyzing the socio-economic dynamics of krismon on the micro level. The authors' research is based on a longitudinal perspective and not limited to the crisis period. Both authors had in the past conducted fieldwork separately in North Subang and East Cirebon. In early 1998, after the outbreak of the economic crises in Asia, they went to the same locations together and conducted their fieldwork. This has enabled the authors to study the malaise as a process unfolding itself in successive stages rather than as a static momentary phenomenon.

The book is organized into 6 chapters. Chapter 1 is a prologue and introduces the major themes of the book and summarizes the work and welfare before and after krismon. Chapter 2 gives detailed information about location, socio-economic configuration, economic life, and dynamics of welfare and poverty in North Subang. Chapter 3 examines in detail the impact of krismon in North Subang. Chapter 4 and 5 shift gears from North Subang to East Cirebon. Chapter 6 is an epilogue and recaps the book.

The authors begin with stressing that the poverty level, which was already much higher than officially approved by the government of Indonesia and leading international agencies,climbed and embraced more than half of all households since the beginning of the krismon. In fact, poverty was widespread even before krismon in Suharto's Indonesia (The New Order regime). Krismon just increased the level and intensity of poverty. The authors calculated that 49.5 million of total population had sunk below the official poverty line at the end of the 1998. The percentage of people unable to satisfy their basic needs rose to a dramatic level. According to their calculations, around two-thirds of the inhabitants in fieldwork villages were living in poverty. This fact motivated the authors to introduce the concept of under-class of ultra poor, characterized by a condition in which they have hardly any means of production or none at all and little access to any means of consumption. To be able to compensate the consequences of unemployment and poverty, many households sent their young female relatives to work as domestic servants in Saudi Arabia or Malaysia.

The authors claim that krismon caused not only more misery and poverty but has further widened the divide between the rural rich and the poor, whose numbers have rapidly increased. To support this argument they present a real life example: the cost of food consumption rose more rapidly than that of non-food consumption. This essentially meant that the poor were harder hit than the non-poor.

The authors criticize official statistics on economic...