Population Projections in Indonesia

Wendy Hartanto, BKKBN, Indonesia

Arguably population projections made by Indonesia’s pioneering economic demographers, Widjojo Nitisastro and Nathaniel Iskandar, were the key catalysts for the development of the family planning program in 1970. Equally, over the first decades of the program government planners closely monitored fertility rates in order to regularly revise and refine the projections used for planning. Since the onset of reformist democratic regimes in 1998 projections have become increasingly important, not only at the national level, but for government activities at the provincial and district levels. The challenge for demographers is to choose valid and reliable assumptions for vital rates and migration, particularly in a context in which these rates are also used to measure the performance of government officials. Indonesia pays a great deal of attention to projections, but at times different stakeholders have conflicting interests in the process and utilization of the results.