Regional disparities in Indonesia: A social indicators approach

Abstract

The paper examines the nature of regional imbalance in Indonesia by using a number of social indicators. Several disaggregated social indices are constructed with the help of a taxonomic technique. For the purpose of comparison, an overall economic index is also constructed. It is observed that the ranking of provinces differ substantially across the indices, implying that there is no causal relationship between the selected social and economic indicators. Regional disparities declined in the past decade in terms of all social indices except the demographic index. Economic inequality nowever increased between 1970 and 1980. © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.