The Jakarta branch of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) revealed the city’s population had reached 9.5 million, or 4 percent of the country’s total population of 237.6 million.
“The total population in the city is 9,588,198 people, with 3 percent more males in the ratio of male to female,” agency head Agus Suherman told The Jakarta Post over the telephone on Wednesday.
The figure exceeds a prediction of 8.9 million people in 2010 published on the Jakarta BPS’s official website. It even surpasses the city’s predicted 2025 population of 9.2 million.
The census, if accurate, reveals a 14.4 percent growth on the 8.3 million people tallied in the previous nationwide census in 2000. That figure had only grown by 1.8 percent from figures collated in 1990.
Agus said Jakarta’s 662-square-kilometer area had a population density of 14,476 people per square kilometer.
He said of the five municipalities, excluding the Thousand Islands regency, Central Jakarta has the highest density with 18,676 people per square kilometer.
Central Jakarta, however, was home to the fewest people, with a population of only 898,883, compared to East Jakarta with 2.6 million people.
Agus said detailed analyses for the cause of the high population had not yet been made available.
“We will finish all analyses, including demographic structures and housing conditions, by December,” he said.
Meanwhile, a senior researcher from the University of Indonesia’s Demography Institute, Djainal Abidin, said the city’s soaring population was likely caused by a lower mortality rate thanks to improvements to healthcare, a higher birth rate and increased urbanization.
“The most dominant factor is urbanization. As people from other parts of the country migrate to Jakarta, they also build families here, increasing the population,” he said.
According to BPS data in 2005, West Java tops the list of places of origin of migrants moving into Jakarta with 1.1 million people, followed by Banten with 482,399 people and Central Java with 99,986 people.
The rapid growth of Jakarta’s population confirms a 2008 UN Population Fund (UNFPA) report that says — for the first time in history — more than half the world’s population is living in towns and cities. By 2030 this number will swell to almost 5 billion, with urban growth concentrated in Africa and Asia.
Djainal said the wide gap in economic growth between Jakarta and other areas is the biggest factor fueling increased urbanization.
“The government has to make a better policy in distributing the state budget. The focus should be on other regions to stimulate economic growth,” he said.
He said the decentralization policy apparently gave a less prominence to family planning programs, which were robust under the New Order regime.
According to the National Family Planning Coordinator Board (BKKBN), Indonesia’s fertility rate remained at 2.6 between 2002 and 2007.
BKKBN head Sugiri Syarief previously said that for Indonesia to avoid problems of overpopulation in the future, the fertility rate would have to come down to 2.1.
Jakarta has reached the target, with the city’s fertility rate standing at 2.1, down from 2.2 in 2002.
The figure means the average family in Jakarta had two children, with a few having more. Despite the city’s “ideal” fertility rate, it is still common to find big families on the streets.
With 9.5 million people living in the city, and millions commuting in from the surrounding areas each day, Jakarta will not be a pleasant place to live in coming years unless significant efforts were made to slow population growth, Djainal said.
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