diff --git a/datafusion/common/src/config.rs b/datafusion/common/src/config.rs
index 6033d4a0ccf02..6c566229f0319 100644
--- a/datafusion/common/src/config.rs
+++ b/datafusion/common/src/config.rs
@@ -227,7 +227,7 @@ config_namespace! {
     pub struct ParquetOptions {
         /// If true, uses parquet data page level metadata (Page Index) statistics
         /// to reduce the number of rows decoded.
-        pub enable_page_index: bool, default = false
+        pub enable_page_index: bool, default = true
 
         /// If true, the parquet reader attempts to skip entire row groups based
         /// on the predicate in the query and the metadata (min/max values) stored in