The Demographics of Indonesia
If you are like many people in the world, you possess some basic information about Indonesia but you really know very little of the details about the country. Through this article, you are provided a basic overview of the demographics of the Republic of Indonesia. With this information, you really will have a keener insight into the day to day lives of the people that inhabit this sprawling nation of over 17,000 individual islands.
A huge percentage of the population of Indonesia lives on the island of Java. At the present time, approximately 130 million live on Java, making it the most populated island in all of the world. There has been a concerted effort at family planning and population control in Indonesia; however, the population of Indonesia is expected to climb to approximately 315 million people by 2035. The estimated population growth in Indonesia clocks in at about 1.25% annually at the present time.
The vast majority of the residents and citizens of Indonesia are descended from Austronesian speaking people. These are the people that originated in Taiwan centuries ago. At the present time, there are approximately 300 distinct native ethnicities in Indonesia.
Throughout the country, there are 742 different languages and dialects that are spoken by the people of Indonesia today. Javanese is the most significant language spoken in the country, being spoken by about 42% of the entire population of Indonesia. The Javanese actually are also the politically and culturally dominate ethnic group in Indonesia. The other larger ethnic groups in the country include the Sundanese, the Malays and the Madurese.
Despite the fact that there are many different ethnic groups in the country, there does exist a strong sense of Indonesian nationhood. This sense of nationhood co-exists rather easily with regional and ethnic identities that are also important to the Indonesian people as a whole.
Interestingly, one of the smallest ethnic groups in Indonesia, the Chinese-Indonesians, is also one of the most influence of all of the other ethnic groups, large or small. Chinese-Indonesians make up less that 2% of the entire population of Indonesia. However, much of the country's privately owned wealth is Chinese owned or controlled. This situation has resulted in a considerable amount of anti-Chinese angst throughout the country in more recent times.
Although not an Islamic nation, Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims of any country in the world today. (As an aside, Islam has now become the largest religion in the world as of 2007, Muslims out pacing Roman Catholics for the first time in history.)
Because of the ethnic diversity of Indonesia, it is one of the most culturally rich and vibrant countries in all of the world. This cultural diversity extends to the arts, cuisine and to all other aspects of life in this archipelago nation today.
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