Blog # 5 Indonesia faces ‘serious’ population problem

This article is about Indonesia family problems and their large population. They continue to be unable to control population increases, and now are facing serious social and economic problems due to over population. This article states that Indonesia has approximate 4.2 million babies being born every year. The country’s total population reached 240 million in the year of 2009. The country is being urged to family planning seriously by the National Populations and Family Planning Board, established by the 2009 Law on population growth and family development. According to the article 9.1 percent of fertile couple, which the board main target segment, did not have access to family planning in 2009, compared to 8.6 percent in 2008.

Furthermore, not having adequate access to family planning may be a cause to the population growth. The root cause of the population boom is also the lack of knowledge about family planning. Being that Indonesia does continue to have a high population growth, their quality of life is also getting shorter. I think it is a big concern that many problems can expand because of a country being overpopulated. The new law that was established in 2009 will encourage the government and the House of Representative to consider the population and family planning issue a serious problem. There are also other problems that over population growth can cause, like dealing with food security and poverty; population expert believe Indonesia problem are rooted in poor urban and the centralization of almost all economic activities. The number of people living below that poverty line should be reduced. I learned that many people think that having more than 2 children is their right; moreover, lower income families cannot afford to perchance contraception. By introducing planning control program family can focus on the idea that a family with more than two children is a liability, not an asset.  With the new law, boards will initiate a new cooperation between government bodies and related organization to achieve a target fertility rate of one child per mother in 2015 from 2.3 children per mother currently.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/04/16/indonesia-faces-%E2%80%98serious%E2%80%99-population-problem.html