Academician Underlines the Importance of Population Control for Excellent Human Resources
DEPOK – Thursday, (24/09/2020) news.detik.com published an article about Turro S. Wongkaren, the head of the Demography Institute, FEB UI, entitled “Academician Underlines the Importance of Population Control for Excellent Human Resources”. Below is the complete article:
Jakarta – Demography Institute, FEB UI Head Turro S. Wongkaren said Indonesia’s advance from a lower-middle income country to an upper-middle income country according to the World Bank’s country classifications brings to mind the important issue of population quantity. A country’s upgrade or downgrade is measured based its Gross National Income, she said.
“Because the indicator used is per capita, it means the figures are influenced not just by the economy but also by the population. This means issues related to population quantity are as equally important as issues related to productivity or economic policies,” she said in a written statement on Tuesday (22/9/2020).
She quoted Prof Emil Salim’s statement that it takes 18 years for a country to join the lower-middle income group and 33 years to advance to the upper-middle income group. In fact, Indonesia only has 25 years until 2045.
“It means that if our economic growth rate is stable as in the past 30 years, we will still be in the same group we are today when Indonesia celebrates its centennial. That’s not what we want because it means that we run the risk of a middle-income trap, stuck in the same income group,” said Turro.
Fortunately, she said, the government is aware of this and has invested greatly in physical development, building basic services and infrastructure. However, the government also realizes that sustainable development cannot be carried out without good human resources.
“Today, when people talk about excellent human resources, they focus on quality as quantity is considered a given or irrelevant. They argue that good-quality human resources will result in high productivity regardless of the size of the population,” she said.
She cited as examples Singapore (with a population of around 6 million), which in 2019 had a GDP per capita of US$65.233, Germany (83 million, GDP per capita of US$46.259) and China, which has often been cited as an example and whose income per capita is twice as big as Indonesia’s despite the fact that it has population of 1.4 miliar people.
“This means there is no such thing as an ideal size of population for economic development. The examples above show that countries with small, medium and large population could carry out national development (specifically economic development) well. Thus, each country should make the right decisions within the context of their population at the time the decisions are made,” she said.
She added that countries with low-quality human resources and limited resources but with a large population, say 500 million, will face financial constraints in carrying out development compared to countries with the same low-quality human resources and limited resources but with a population of only 300 million.
A large population requires bigger sources for purposes of education, health, character building and sense security for human resources development. This is why Indonesia needs to pay attention to the issue of population quantity.
“Population is not static. The population size of a country is not something that falls from the sky but the result of demographic processes of birth, mortality and human mobility. The three processes affect the dynamics of population quantity, growth and age structure, and distribution,” she said.
Therefore, she called on the National Population and Family Planning Agency (BKKBN) as the agency that plays the most important role in controlling population growth to continue the campaign about the importance of population quantity so that Indonesia could advance to a higher-income group. The BKKBN could capitalize its role by controling Indonesia’s birth, mortality and migration rates.
Currently, the BKKBN plays quite an important role in controling the birth rate (in collaboration with the Ministry of Health) in terms of reducing birth mortality rate (particularly maternal mortality rate) but has very limited role in controling population migration (mobility).
“However, in the context of Indonesia since the end of the 1960s, birth control was the most crucial factor that influenced changes in the national population condition. The decline in birth rate since the 1970s has upgraded our ranking in terms of earnings and provided us with a new era of ‘demographic bonus’ that will end by the middle of the 2030s,” she said.
“Unfortunately, efforts to capitalize on the demographic bonus are hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economy and all aspects of our life are also affected. In a situation where resources become limited, improving quality will likely become a priority. In this case, the BKKBN should strive to ensure that programs to control population quantity are not sidelined,” she concluded.
(lem)