Papua's poorest residents' expenditure is far below the poverty line.

Poverty is not merely a matter of the number or percentage of poor people. This problem also needs to be examined from other perspectives, such as the Poverty Gap Index (P1).

P1 is a measure of the average shortfall in the expenditure of the poor population compared to the Poverty Line. The higher the P1 index value, the further the average expenditure of the population is below the Poverty Line.

Statistics Indonesia (BPS) reported that the national P1 index reached 1.56 in September 2022. This figure decreased by 0.03 points compared to March 2022, and decreased by 0.11 points from September 2021.

The decrease in P1 indicates that the average expenditure of the poor population is getting closer to the Poverty Line, and the inequality in the expenditure of the poor population is narrowing.

Of the 34 provinces, 15 provinces have a P1 above the national figure, and 19 provinces are below the national P1.

Papua had the highest P1, reaching 7.28 in September 2022. This means that the average expenditure gap of the poor population in Papua was furthest below the Poverty Line compared to other provinces.

The Poverty Line is the minimum expenditure to meet a person's basic needs for a month, including both food and non-food needs. The national Poverty Line in September 2022 was Rp535,547 per capita per month.

The provinces with the next highest poverty depth index were West Papua (5.25), East Nusa Tenggara (3.74), Maluku (3.08), Aceh (2.9), and Gorontalo (2.85).

Following these were West Nusa Tenggara (2.57), Bengkulu (2.17), Central Sulawesi (2.15), and West Sulawesi (2.09).

Overall, the number of poor people in Indonesia reached 26.36 million in September 2022. This amounted to 9.57% of the total national population.