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The Health | january, 2019
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Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, Deputy Prime Minister cum
Minister for Women Development.
RESPONSIBLE… LPPKN is always willing to help couples in need of their
services, especially regarding problems to conceive children.
Malaysian fertility in jeopardy
The country’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) inevitably
and continuously declines
S
ince more than 5 decades
ago, the fertility rate of
Malaysians has been expo-
nentially decreasing, from
6.7 percent of children per
woman in 1957, 4 percent
in 1980, 3 percent in 2000,
to 2.1 percent in 2010. According to
the Ministry of Women, Family, and
Development (KPWKM) through its
agency, the National Population and
Family Development Board (LPPKN), the
latest data in 2017 sees the fertility rate
continues to spiral down to 1.9 percent
of children per woman.
Moreover, the data extracted from the
United Nations 2015 revision on popula-
tion predicts the decrease on fertility will
continue from 1.83 percent in 2020 to
1.79 percent in 2100.
High fertility
rate is non-existent
TABLE 1: AVERAGE MINIMUM AGE FOR FIRST MARRIAGE
YEAR MEN WOMEN
2004 28.9
2014
29.3
25.3
26.2
Source: 5th Population and Family Research (KPKM-5) 2014, LPPKN
Global data on fertility rate tells us one
thing. No developing countries has a high
fertility rate, Malaysia included. Other
examples of countries with low fertility
rates include Hong Kong (1.2%), South
Korea (1.2%), Japan (1.4%), Thailand
(1.5%), and Singapore (1.2%) – based on
data from 2015.
Despite Malaysia’s population
continuous growth from 32.4 million
in 2017 to a whopping 44.5 million by
2050, the rate of annual population
growth will continue to fall to 0.7 percent
by the same year
TABLE 2: REASONS TO DELAY MARRIAGE BY GENDER
REASON TO DELAY MARRIAGE MEN (%) REASON TO DELAY MARRIAGE WOMEN (%)
Financial issues 56.0 Trouble finding partner 35.7
Trouble finding partner 18.1 Financial issues 26.0
Career advancement 9.4 Career advancement 18.1
Source: 5th Population and Family Research (KPKM-5) 2014, LPPKN
TABLE 3: STUDENT ENROLMENT IN IPTA AND IPTS BY GENDER, 2013 – 2015
GENDER
2013
2014
2015
IPTA IPTS
IPTA
IPTS IPTA IPTS
MEN
218,425 235,038
216,714
225,896 205,384 294,620
WOMEN 341,934 249,925
346,472
267,829 335,254 286,308
TOTAL
560,359 484,963
563,186
493,725 540,638 580,928
Source: Ministry of Education.
This means that within the years 2071
and 2072, Malaysia has the potential to
experience massive population shrinkage
where the county’s projected population
will wither from 46.1 million in 2071 to
44.6 million in 2100, per Figure 1.
The minimum average
marriage age
Based on the 5th Population and Family
Research (KPKM-5) organized by the
National Population and Family Devel-
opment Board (LPPKN) in 2014, the
minimum age in average for both men
and women has been increasing since a
decade ago.
The average age for men getting mar-
ried has risen from 28.9 in 2204 to 29.3
in 2014. Whereas for women, the average
age was 25.3 in 2004, and had risen to
26.2 in 2014 – as visualized in Table 1.
Cause of late marriages
Although 86.8 percent of non-married
population between the ages of 25 to 49
has the desire to get married, KPKM-5
found that there are 3 main reasons
why they are delaying it. The 3 reasons
are; financial difficulty, trouble finding
partners, and career advancement.
This was proven when data found that
the non-married population perceives
the overall cost for marriage is around
RM20,000, higher than the average
RM14,000 they are able to provide.
From the perspective of education and
career on the other hand, late marriages
has been linked to the need to advance
one’s education to tertiary level and the
need to focus on career advancements.
This particularly affects the women
population, and is the reasons why they
are delaying marriage.
Additionally, statistics retrieved from