While Asia Wants a Baby Boom, Indonesia Says Enough Is Enough

Photographer: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency

Countries across Asia are trying everything from fertility tours to baby bonuses to spur population growth in an aging world. Not so in Indonesia, where officials are trying to convince people to have fewer children.

The world’s fourth most-populous country is promoting later marriages, family planning and contraception to lower its fertility rate to 2.1 children per woman by 2025. That’s the “replacement rate” that would effectively flatten population growth in the country of 270 million, damping some concerns that overcrowding could mean fewer job opportunities and strains on government services.

Indonesia’s latest push — a family planning campaign starting from late January — follows a decades-long struggle to bring the fertility rate down from 3 children per woman in the early 1990s. The difference now, National Population and Family Planning Agency Head Hasto Wardoyo says, is that instead of just slowing population growth, Indonesia is aiming to simultaneously improve other factors such as health, education and employment.

“In the past, the focus was on reducing the quantity of the population. Now it’s more on improving the quality of the population,” Wardoyo said. “The quality and productivity of human resources must be improved because we’re currently in a demographic dividend period. If not utilized, the demographic bonus can actually become a burden for development, rather than development capital.”

That might appear to be a risky venture for an emerging market, especially one that has lured investors with its youthful demographics and cheap labor. China famously has found it’s a struggle to reset the habits of families who for decades were restricted to one child. And development economists generally advise that overpopulation tends to resolve itself as a country climbs the income ladder, making counter-efforts unnecessary.

Indonesia is saying it can’t afford to wait, especially as it’s bracing in the short term for potentially more pregnancies and less contraceptive use amid the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders.

Delaying Babies

Like many of her friends and relatives, Yulia Purnamasari said she got pregnant right after getting married in 2018. But when she and her husband realized the time and money needed to raise a child, they delayed having another baby so they could save up for a few years.

“We think it’s a plan that fits with our capacity with time, energy and money,” the 29-year-old working mother said. “We want to be able to provide our children with our maximum attention, care and education.”

Purnamasari said she didn’t know about family planning or how to access counseling where she lives on Lombok island in eastern Indonesia. Luckily, a local midwife was able to give her advice on contraception and installed an intrauterine device.

But Purnamasari still sees herself as an exception.

“My sister, for example, doesn’t do family planning and doesn’t use contraceptives regularly,” Purnamasari said. “If she gets pregnant out of plan, she just sees it as a blessing.”

Human Capital

The government’s campaign to make Purnamasari less of an exception, along with emphasizing a more digital-ready workforce, seems to be winning over analysts and investors.

The drive to develop human capital “aligns with broader strategies to move Indonesia up the industrial value chain in areas like electric vehicles and downstream processing, as well as accelerating growth in what is already Asean’s largest digital economy,” said…