In Indonesia, the national family planning program that started in the 1970s has been championed as the success of fertility decline, from around six births per woman back then, which dropped to near replacement level in the 2020s. The Indonesia family planning program utilises community involvement that focuses on direct face-to-face communication, using tens of thousands of family planning field workers while massively promoting family planning using mass media. This study investigates how communication in the form of mass media exposure and interpersonal communications affects contraceptive use and the onset of marital age in Indonesia, examining data from the 1976 World Fertility Survey, the 1987 National Contraceptive Prevalence Survey, and The Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey from 1991 to 2017. Other Indonesian survey data relevant to the study were also used to support the data. In examining the effect of communication, several socio-demographic covariates were controlled for this study: age group, education level, partner’s education, literacy, and whether the respondents lived in an urban or rural setting. Evidence from the study has shown that the effect of communication is significant in influencing the use of contraceptives and delaying marriage, although the effect is diminishing. The findings of this study contribute significantly to understanding how communication has impacted Indonesia's remarkable fertility decline.

Speaker Bio:

Syauqy Lukman is a final year PhD student at The School of Demography, Australian National University. Having trained in communications for his bachelor's degree and management for his master's, Syauqy developed an interest in looking at communication phenomena using the demographic approach and studying how communications influence demographic change. His particular demographic topics of interest are fertility, sexual and reproductive health, and youth generation studies, specifically in his country of origin, Indonesia. As an academic of the faculty of communication sciences at Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia, Syauqy envisioned himself in the future as an expert who focused on studies that looked at the interplay between communication sciences and demography.

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