Middle Class Under Pressure

[centurion]

The official Statistics of the Indonesian Government (BPS) defines Middle Class (e.g Middle income spender) as people who spend Rp 2.04m+ (e.g USD125).
So how do you define people, diaspora living in Indonesia who spend USD1,000,000 to purchase property in Indonesia as discussed in this thread?

Global Citizenship Indonesia

https://www.cna.id/indonesia/indonesia-luncurkan-global-citizenship-indonesia-ala-india-untuk-permudah-diaspora-41121 Another day…another new name for the same thing? Any thoughts? What is the difference between this is and KITAP unlimited? What about diaspora Golden visa?

www.expatindo.org

My security guy in my building became middle class long time ago.

 

[pantaiema]

My security guy in my building became middle class long time ago.

Well, they might be earning more than Rp2.04m, but you can never really know how much they actually spend. If their spending is only Rp2.03m million, then technically they wouldn’t fall into the middle-income category

Income data is relatively easy to gather and verify, but individual spending data in a country with vast population is a whole different story. Say they buy instant noodle in 'warung', buy groceries in 'pasar'. How could you track it accurately ?? I believe even major institutions like the IMF, World Bank, or OECD struggle to verify it because they don’t have enough people on the ground to collect it directly. So they mostly depend on the statistics provided by BPS.

That’s why, in Indonesia BPS statistics are so dominant there’s really nothing else that can compete with them.