Population and economic development in Indonesia: A revisit with new data and methods

The long-term relationship between population and economic development is an important research topic in development economics. However, after several decades of research, no consensus has been reached as to whether the relationship is positive or negative. This paper chose Indonesia as a case study and employed both a linear cointegration test and a nonlinear cointegration test to examine the relationship between population and income. The tests detected a long-run equilibrium relationship between population and real per capita income in Indonesia. Also, the causality test indicated that there existed a unidirectional causality from Indonesia’s population expansion to the country’s economic growth, but not vice versa. These results indicate a population-driven economic development in Indonesia. In other words, Indonesia could represent a textbook case of population-induced development where a rapid population growth stimulates economic development.