Governing Poverty Reduction in Southeast Asia: Policy Portfolios and Administrative Capacity in Five Countries

Abstrak

Poverty reduction in Southeast Asia is often assessed through changes in poverty headcounts, yet the administrative arrangements that produce and sustain these outcomes differ substantially across countries. This study compares poverty-reduction governance in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam using secondary data only. It draws on the World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform, national poverty statistics, government policy documents, World Bank country assessments, and the Asian Development Bank’s 2026 Social Protection Indicators of Coverage and Effectiveness framework. The analysis conceptualizes poverty reduction as a policy portfolio comprising five interdependent functions: protective reach, capability formation, productive inclusion, administrative integration and targeting, and territorial and shock adaptability. Findings show that the five countries have moved beyond narrow relief programs but through distinct institutional configurations. Indonesia is strengthening a large multi-program system through socioeconomic data integration; Malaysia combines broad assistance coverage with program fragmentation and benefit-adequacy concerns; the Philippines relies on an institutionalized conditional cash-transfer system linking protection to human capital but still requires dynamic beneficiary updating and stronger transition pathways; Thailand’s very low extreme-poverty rate shifts attention toward aging, informality, exclusion errors, and regional disparities; and Viet Nam increasingly integrates multidimensional poverty reduction with territorial development. Across cases, sustainable poverty reduction depends less on adding isolated programs than on governing complementarities among social protection, services, employment pathways, data systems, and subnational implementation. The study contributes to public-administration research by reframing poverty reduction as a problem of policy-portfolio governance and administrative capacity.