This article examines the role of education in the likelihood of being never married among older adults in Indonesia. Following the Multiple Equilibrium Framework, our paper argues that increasing education imposes a more common trend of singlehood since marriage continues to be a near universal norm in Indonesia. Previous research found that increase in education delays marriage, but few studies have paid attention to the role of education in the decision to stay single. We use Indonesia National Socio-Economic Survey or SUSENAS 2007 and 2017 - two datasets with ten years span - to see whether there has been a change in the effect of education on the probability of permanent singlehood among women and men aged 40-65. The result from the logistic regression confirms a U-shaped relationship between education and singleness propensity. Our key finding is that an additional year of schooling reduces the probability of being single up until senior secondary level, while having education beyond high school increases the probability of being single. Our result implies that traditional norm towards gender role remains strong in Indonesia. We also find that both highly educated women and men have similar likelihood to stay single in this setting.

As a predominantly Muslim and ethnically diverse new democracy in Asia, Indonesia is a timely case to study how the contending forces of development and social change are reflected in changing norms and practices around family formation. This paper examines the extent to which the second demographic transition (SDT) theory can provide a primary framework to understand contemporary patterns of fertility, marriage and family change in Indonesia. Against the backdrop of socio-political change following Reformasi in 1998, we found emerging demographic features typically associated with societies in later stages of fertility transition. These include fertility below replacement in some regions; increasing age at first marriage, non-marriage, and divorce rates; and growing diversity in household/family forms. As the vast regions of Indonesia is economically, culturally, and demographically heterogeneous, these key features of SDT are not likely to emerge and unfold in a uniform manner. Further, these demographic shifts are taking place amidst multiple tensions and contradictions in the nature and direction of ideational change pertaining to marriage and the family. We argue that the prevailing ideational change driving the shifts in marriage, fertility, and the family within Indonesia is neither unilinear nor singular in nature. Emerging ideational change embodying individualism, secularism, and post-materialism—originally proposed in SDT theory to be the primary drivers of fertility decline in post-industrial Western Europe—can overlap with popular values promoting de-secularization and the strengthening of familial institutions. As a demographic framework, the SDT theory is an important and useful starting point. But it needs to be reevaluated by considering the complex socio-political and increasingly precarious economic terrains behind fertility transition, as well as marriage and family change in post-Reformasi Indonesia.