Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – The number of elderly citizens in Indonesia in the past year has increased by around 1.2 million according to an official from the National Population and Family Planning Agency.

"The number of the elderly in Indonesia continues to increase. In 2019 it was 9.60 percent and in 2020 became 9.92 percent, or an increase of 1.2 million a year," said Deputy for Family Welfare and Family Empowerment Nopian Andusti in a webinar entitled Digital Equity for All Ages, Thursday (Oct. 21).

According to Nopian, currently Indonesia has around 26.82 million elderly citizens, with the percentage of elderly women 52.29 percent and men 47.71 percent.

"This shows that the life expectancy of women is higher than that of men," he said.

Nopian pointed out that 64.29 percent of the elderly in Indonesia are aged 60 to 69 years, while another 27.23 percent are aged 70 to 79 years, and 8.49 percent are over 80 years old.

He noted that as many as 52.95 percent of the elderly lived in urban areas and 47.05 percent lived in rural areas.

Nopian also explained that there are six provinces in the country that are classified as entering the population aging stage with the number of elderly citizens exceeding 10 percent, namely Yogyakarta, Central Java, East Java, Bali, North Sulawesi, and West Sumatra.

The increase in the number of elderly people needs to be followed by efforts to increase their resilience and independence, he added.

"Resilient elderlies are those who are able to adapt to the aging process positively, so that they could achieve quality old age in a comfortable environment," he said.

"This aging process takes place naturally, but we should go towards quality elderly with physically, socially, and mentally healthy through life cycle," said Nopian.

In an effort to increase resilient, welfare, and independent elderlies, the agency implements the Elderly Family Development program.

The program includes efforts to increase family knowledge and skills in nurturing and caring for the elderlies, develop elderlies’ physical and psychological life, as well as empowering them.

So far, there are 44,483 groups of the Elderly Family Development program in 34 provinces.

Reporting by Indonesia Window