There was widespread agreement within the Indonesian government and among foreign advisers that one of the most pressing problems facing the nation in the early 1990s was overpopulation. While Indonesia still had high fertility rates, there were remarkable reductions in these levels in the 1980s. The overall population annual growth rate was reduced to an around 2.0 % by 1990, down from 2.2 in the 1975-80 time. The crude birth rate declined from 48.8 births per 1,000 in 1968 to 29 per 1,000 in 1990.Although the widely publicized goal of 22 per 1,000 by 1991 was not achieved, the results were impressive for a nation the size of Indonesia.The success of the program in these areas seemed to be directly linked to the improved education of women,their increasing tendency to postpone marriage, and, most valuable, to a growing awareness and effective use of modern contraceptives.

The inability of these islands to support ever larger populations on ever smaller plots of land was apparent in 1992, particularly to the farmers themselves. Although the intensification of padi agriculture had for decades permitted the absorption of this rising labor force, the rural poor from Java, Bali, and Madura were leaving their native areas to seek more land and opportunity elsewhere. Attempts at remarkable land reform, which might have improved the peasants'lot, were stalled-if not abandoned-in many areas of Java because of riots and massacres following the alleged communist coup attempt of 1965. Reformers were cautious about raising the issue of land redistribution for fear of being branded communists.