Caught in transit: Questions about the future of Indonesian fertility

Three decades after the establishment of a government sponsored family planning programme in Indonesia attempts to predict the course of transition in fertility are frustrated by the complexity and opaqueness of demographic analyses. Economic crisis, political turmoil and social breakdown have undermined the optimistic scenarios painted a mere decade ago. The lack of reliable demographic data has been exacerbated by the impact of major budget cuts on the national census of 2000 and the radical decentralization plans implemented in 2001. Speculations about growing poverty, declining social institutions and political uncertainties abound, and commentators read potential demographic reverses into their prognoses about this, the fourth largest population, and largest Muslim majority nation in the world. Against such a contradictory backdrop demographers can only point to two basic arguments. First, detailed examinations of the available data indicate a possible slowing but not a reversal of trends. Specifically, the “proximate” determinants of contraceptive use and delayed marriage have been robust in the face of dramatic economic decline. Second, the rising cohorts of women of childbearing age continue to show higher levels of education, increasing involvement in both the formal and informal workforces, and firm resolution to control their fertility at comparatively low
levels. When looking forward to 2025 it is well to remember that Indonesia is well past the halfway point in the transition from high to low fertility, and there is every indication that the decline in family sizes will continue.