Posts tagged under Survey
Research on urban poverty: ATM Team in Hanoi
The Asian Trends Monitoring Team is ready to go to Hanoi. From Friday, May 18th, to Thursday, May 24th, Taufik and Johannes will visit organisations working with and for Hanoi’s poor. We will talk to people in slums, on the street and to NGO workers in order to find out more about how people overcome the challenges of being poor in a bustling city.
To support our qualitative research with some more data, we are also conducting a survey among the poor in Hanoi. We aim to collect responses from about 350 respondents, the same sample size we had reached in Jakarta and Manila. You are already curious about the results? Read more about our survey results in recent blog posts about saving’s strategies,access to credit, and Jakarta’s water supply. Also check out this video about street fights in Jakarta’s slums.
Moreover, in about a week or so we will release our next ATM Bulletin on Jakarta’s poor with detailed information about our field trip to Jakarta. So stay tuned for the release.
[Update: The research from our visits in slums in Jakarta and Manila is now available for free. Download it here ATM Bulletin 16 on Jakarta's Poor and also ATM Bulletin 17 on Manila's Poor]
Underdeveloped financial services for Jakarta’s Poorest
The Asian Trends Monitoring team conducted a survey among Jakarta’s slum dwellers between February 24 and March 2nd 2012. We collected a total of 348 responses from seven different neighbourhoods in Jakarta with the help of 15 research assistants from the University of Indonesia.
Picture by andiona
One of the items required respondents to rate their difficulty of “Saving Money”. More than a third of respondents answered that they were unable to save, while another third said that it was very difficult for them (see previous blog post). Seeing those results we assumed that a majority of them would then turn to different sources to borrow money for consumption smoothing. Among our expectations were a high percentage of Microcredit users, followed by the usage of informal money lenders, always a thriving business in poor areas.
However, the actual results were a little bit surprising. Only about 28% of respondents indicated that they actually borrow money.
It turned out that the primary source for borrowing money is among friends and relatives (52%), followed by cooperatives (22%), and informal money lenders (16%). Commercial bank loans, pawn shops, and MFIs were the least popular credit sources.
Saving strategies of Jakarta’s poor
The Asian Trends Monitoring team conducted a survey among Jakarta’s slum dwellers between February 24 and March 2nd 2012. We collected a total of 348 responses from seven different neighbourhoods in Jakarta with the help of 15 research assistants from the University of Indonesia. The survey had a “perception of difficulties” section comprising ten categories, each to be rated on a 5-point scale (from “easy” to “impossible/unable to do”). These ten categories were then compiled into a “life difficulty” index through direct summation.
One of the items required respondents to rate their difficulty of “Saving Money”. More than a third of respondents answered that they were unable to save, while another third said that it was very difficult for them (see below). Together with finding work opportunities and having enough living space, saving money was the most difficult aspect of the respondents in our sample.
The ability to save money is highly correlated to other important aspects of surviving in the city. We found a significant difference in perceived life difficulty between those who save and those who don’t save regularly. The first group had an average score of 21.6 on the life difficulty index (10 Points indicates Ease, while 50 points indicates inability in all 10 items) compared to 31.3 points for the respondents unable to make weekly savings (see t-test below).