Wati, deserted by her husband, has sent her three children back to her West Java village to stay with her parents while she shares a room with two others, each paying two dollars a month out of a salary of twenty dollars, most of which must be sent to the village. This was the incentive for foreign capital. Taiwanese, Korean or Singaporean subcontractors were drawn here by abnormally low wages which made labour costs in Indonesia among the lowest in the world. Some have returned to their villages, even though it was the inadequate livelihood there that drove them to the city in the first place. As a result, the crisis has been exported to the countryside.
Economic disruption has a profound effect on all areas of social life.
Many young people cannot think of marrying. This suggests the destruction of hopes and expectations on a large scale, as well as creating an expanding sex industry, with all its attendant social and economic costs. The great majority of young people who came to Jakarta to work were reluctant migrants in the first place. They would not have left the village if there had been a choice. As it is, many are reluctant to return or even to tell their families that the hope of a secure job has been disappointed and that they are barely surviving in the alien, unchosen environment of the city.