Does Social Assistance Help Single Parents? Relationship between Marital Status and Households' Educational Expenditure among The Poor in Indonesia

Deskripsi

As far as our knowledge, studying single parents is still a rarity in Indonesia. This paper purpose is to investigate the relationship between the type of parenthood, and the type of social assistance programs beneficiaries in poor households. Using SUSENAS from 2021, this paper use OLS regression to estimate the determinants of educational expenditure, derived from two forms of Engel curve: (1) Double-Logarithmic, and (2) Working-Leser. The result for income elasticity of education in poor household who receive social assistance is in the borderline between elastic (1.013) from double logarithmic specification, and inelastic (0.988) from the Working-Leser specification. Even though the subsample analysis results only significant for married parents, single mothers' education expenditure share is consistently higher than other type of parenthood in the actual and predicted value analysis. Being a non-recipients or beneficiary of PKH or other social assistance program will increase the education expenditure for single mothers, compared to other type of parenthood in poor household. This indicates that social assistance program has helped single mothers as the most deprived group by investing in human capital of the children.