Jakarta – The government is being urged to pay more attention to the country's large working-age population, the result of the Soeharto-era family planning program that reduced the national infant mortality rate.

"As many as two million people need jobs every year, which is quite a burden for the government, which still can't afford to provide jobs for them all," said Moertiningsih Adioetomo, a demographics expert at the University of Indonesia.

Speaking at a recent seminar sponsored by the National Family Planning Coordinating Board, she dismissed reports that Indonesia was currently facing a population boom.

She said that Indonesia, the world's fourth largest country, with around 220 million people, had seen its population grow by about four million annually over the past few years. In the 1980s, it was around 5.33 million a year, a number that dropped to 4.98 million in the 1990s, before settling at 4.12 million in 2000, Moertiningsih said.

Quoting data from the United Nations' World Population Program, she said Indonesia's working-age population had reached 150.6 million in 2006, up from 148.3 million the year before. It is predicted to hit 170.8 million by 2015.

Moertiningsih added that Indonesia's current birth rate of 2.6 percent meant that more than 4 million children were born every year. But only half of those children would go on to higher education, she said. The other half would be likely to enter the work force at the end of junior high school, a pattern of minimal education that would see many people stay in poverty.

She said that in the future, the family planning program would face challenges in serving the poor, who often had larger families than the wealthier and better educated sectors of society.

Comprehensive family planning advocacy should be a government priority in order to prevent a continuing legacy of poverty in the country, she added.

Moertiningsih said that the government also needed to curb population growth to less than 1 percent to maximize the well-being of the people.