CORRELATION BETWEEN ACCESS TO NATURAL RESOURCES AND FAMILY SIZE, FERTILITY AND OUT-MIGRATION FROM MOST FRONTIER AREA OF WEST SUMATRA, INDONESIA

The attention of Indonesian government in population growth control is directing to remote areas as health and family planning services hardly reach households of these areas. This research purposes to find an alternative variable in encouraging participation of household in family planning program through correlting between access to natural resources and household size, fertility and and out-migration. A survey has been carried out in most remote area areas of West Sumatra. We found that there is strong correlation between access to natural resources and family size, fertility, and out migration. We found that, the families which have higher access to natural resources tend to have bigger family size, higher fertility and more number of out-migrants. High-access families demanded more children than low-access families as lack of labor for land cultivation in the frontier areas of West Sumatra. High-access families also have more number of out-migrant of their members as the strategy for pursuing securer livelihood. Based on the findings, providing non-natural resources based livelihood is another variable which will catalyze participation in family planning program in frontier areas.