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he National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN) has recommended that the incoming government provide compulsory education to dissuade early marriages.

BKKBN chairman Fasli Jalal said that in the two terms of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s administration, the agency had yet to achieve the goal of reducing the population growth rate to 1.27 percent a year, and had instead let it grow to 1.49 percent a year in the 2000-2010 period.

He said, however, that the country'€™s total fertility rate had decreased from 5.6 children per woman in the 1970s to 2.6 children per women in 2012.

Total fertility rate represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children.

Population growth rate and total fertility rate, are among other indicators of health status and welfare in the country.

He suggested that the next government support all efforts to promote contraceptive options to 2.3 million brides and grooms as well as 46 million infertile couples.

A demographic expert with the University of Indonesia (UI), Sri Moertiningsih Adioetomo, expressed confidence that the rapid population growth would ease in the
future.

She said that the number of young people between 15 and 29 years of age had reached 63 million people, and would slowly increase to 70 million in 2035, with a decrease in the proportion of children.

'€œWe should be grateful,'€ she said.

Sri said the incoming government should improve education to create more productive and competitive people so that it would benefit from the country'€™s demographic bonus, a condition when the number of people within the productive age bracket is higher than the number of elderly people and children.

Indonesia is estimated to experience this period in 2025-2035.

Sri said that it would not happen as long as the government did not make efforts to revamp its family planning programs, which have been neglected ever since the country entered the Reform era.

She said the new government should show commitment by allocating more state funds to family planning campaigns in the regions.

Agricultural economist from the University of Lampung, Bustanul Arifin, said that 70 percent of the total population lived in cities across the country.

Bustanul said that from an agricultural point of view, the composition was dangerous, as many young people had left the villages over the years, citing data that said there had been a decrease of 500,000 farming households in the last
10 years.

The same data, according to him, also showed that the incomes of villagers had only amounted to Rp 12.4 million (US$1,071) a year.

He also said young villagers who found it difficult to survive as workers in the cities were prone to inciting social conflict. (put)