Living Standards and the Distribution of Income in Colonial Indonesia: A Review of the Evidence

One of the most widely held views about Indonesia, and especially Java, in the nineteenth century was that such economic growth as occurred did not benefit the mass of the indigenous population, whose living standards almost certainly declined. Many scholars have drawn attention to the evidence that per capita rice production fell after 1880 as proof that living standards were definitely falling in the last two decades of the century, while others have not hesitated to draw the bolder conclusion that living standards declined almost continually after 1800: One theme stands out most prominently in Javanese society during this time: the theme of involution and reaction…. Despite the promises of the changing colonial policies to further the individual welfare of the Javanese, conspicuously little was done in this regard. Instead the Javanese farmer became gradually more impoverished throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, with a particularly severe drop in living standards in the second half of the liberal period (1885–1900).