Beyond the Informal Care Infrastructure: Re-Evaluating Municipal Governance, Economic Opportunity Costs, and Systematic Exclusion in Jakarta’s Eldercare Landscape

Rapid demographic ageing presents a major challenge to urban social protection in Indonesia, where institutionalized long-term care remains limited. This study examines informal eldercare governance in Jakarta and estimates caregivers’ labor-market and economic burdens. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design combined analysis of 1,042 elder-dependent households from the 2023 National Socioeconomic Survey, policy review, and interviews with informal caregivers and frontline officials. Seventy-one percent of households relied exclusively on family care, women represented 82% of primary caregivers, and high-intensity caregiving was associated with 2.1 times higher odds of labor-force withdrawal. The estimated annual opportunity cost reached IDR 12.4 trillion under the stated extrapolation assumptions. Qualitative findings identified fragmented municipal responsibilities, cultural depoliticization through filial-duty narratives, and caregiver omission from administrative data. These findings position unpaid care as a material but unrecognized municipal liability and a public-sector performance-audit concern. The study proposes an informal caregiver registry, municipal care credits linked to social protection, and caregiver impact assessments to strengthen accountability and support rights-based long-term care governance.