Page 63 - AEI Insights 2019 - Vol. 5, Issue 1

Ziegenhain, 2019

Indonesia is a country that has a negative migration balance, meaning far more people are
leaving the country every year than migrating to Indonesia. The following table 7 illustrates
that Indonesia has quite a significant amount of workers abroad, particularly in neighbouring
countries such as Malaysia or in Middle Eastern countries near the Persian Gulf. The labour
migration is predicted to continue until 2040 and afterwards.
1990-95 -381.823

2015-20 -825.000

2040-45 -700.000
Table 7: Data from Database Global Political Demography v1_20171006

Another population trend in Indonesia is urbanization. The United Nations projected that by
2050 two thirds of Indonesia’s population will live in urban areas. Over the last forty years the
country has experienced a process of rapid urbanization, resulting in the current situation in
which over half of Indonesia's total population resides in urban areas (see table 8 below). For
the economy this constitutes a positive development as urbanization and industrialization are
necessary to grow into the ranks of a middle income country (VDSI 2017).

1995 2000 2005 2010 2050

Rural Population in percent of total population 64 58 52 46 33

Urban Population in percent of total population 36 42 48 54 67
Table 8: Rural and urban population in Indonesia, Source: World Bank Development Indicators

The Political Demography of Malaysia
The first census in Malaysia in 1970 counted a population of about 11 million people. As table
9 shows, a significant rise of the population has taken place since then. The number of citizens
nearly tripled to over 30 million people. The population of Malaysia is expected to further grow
up to 38.5 million people in 2040.

Total Population

1990 18.211,1 mio.
2015 30.331,0 mio.

2040 38.852,9 mio.

Table 9: Population Development Malaysia, Data from Database Global Political Demography v1_20171006

The crude birth rate of Malaysia went down quite steeply from 42.69 in 1960 to 33.85 in 1970.
In the following years the decrease was markedly lower to 31.31 in 1980 and 28.09 in 1990.
Between 1990 and 2000 it fell quite strong again to 21.97 and only very slow until then (17.09
in 2015).

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