Five Provinces with an Aging Population

Signs of Indonesia's aging population were first detected as early as 2000. The Population Census that year showed that the percentage of elderly Indonesians had exceeded 7 percent. According to a 2017 publication by the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), this aging population statistic is now evident in five provinces, three of which are located on Java Island.

The BPS defines a region as having an aging population structure if the percentage of elderly people is more than 7 percent, and as having an aged population structure if it exceeds 10 percent. The five provinces identified in the 2017 Susenas survey were Yogyakarta Special Region (13.90 percent), Central Java (12.46 percent), East Java (12.16 percent), Bali (10.79 percent), and West Sulawesi (10.37 percent).

Nationally in 2017, this phenomenon was observed based on population composition, where the percentage of the elderly was slightly higher than that of toddlers (8.97 percent versus 8.95 percent). However, based on population projections from the 2010 Population Census, Indonesia was only projected to reach an aged population structure after 2020.