Catholic nuns pass armed soldiers stand guard at the the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral which was attacked by suicide bomb on March 28, ahead of Mass on Good Friday, April 2, 2021, in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. On Sunday, a recently married couple with suspected militant links used pressure cooker bombs to blow themselves up outside the cathedral in the capital of South Sulawesi province. - AP
JAKARTA, April 2 (Bloomberg): Countries across Asia are trying everything from fertility tours to baby bonuses to spur population growth in an aging world. Not so in Indonesia, where officials are trying to convince people to have fewer children.
The world’s fourth most-populous country is promoting later marriages, family planning and contraception to lower its fertility rate to 2.1 children per woman by 2025. That’s the "replacement rate” that would effectively flatten population growth in the country of 270 million, damping some concerns that overcrowding could mean fewer job opportunities and strains on government services.
