<![CDATA[Poverty is a multidimensional development issue, as it involves people's limited ability to meet their basic needs and achieve a decent standard of living. In North Sumatra Province, poverty remains a concern despite a generally declining trend in the poverty rate. As of March 2025, the poverty rate in North Sumatra stood at 7.36 percent, equivalent to approximately 1,140.25 thousand people. This indicates that a decline in the poverty rate has not yet fully resolved the issue of poverty. This study aims to examine the effects of the Open Unemployment Rate (OUR) and the Human Development Index (HDI) on poverty in North Sumatra. The study uses annual time-series data obtained from Statistics Indonesia (BPS) and employs a quantitative approach with the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method to examine short-run and long-run relationships. The Bounds Test results indicate the existence of a long-run relationship, with an F-statistic of 6.590342. In the short run, the OUR has a coefficient of 0.095552 (p-value = 0.7609), indicating an insignificant effect, while the HDI has a coefficient of -0.549334 (p-value = 0.0328), indicating a negative and statistically significant effect at the 10% significance level. In the long run, the OUR has a coefficient of 0.076957 (p-value = 0.7749), indicating an insignificant effect, whereas the HDI has a coefficient of -0.442429 (p-value = 0.0000), indicating a negative and statistically significant effect. These findings suggest that improvements in the HDI are more consistently associated with poverty reduction than changes in the OUR.]]>
