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Malaysia’s fertility rate drops to lowest in history

PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia’s fertility rate for 2018 dropped to 1.8 babies per woman aged 15 to 49, from 1.9 in 2017.

This is below the replacement level of 2.1 babies per woman, and is the lowest fertility rate in the country’s history.

“(There was a) 1.3 per cent drop in the number of live births to 501,945 in 2018 from 508,685 in 2017,” chief statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said in a statement on the Malaysia 2019 Vital Statistics report, which was released on Thursday.

This means that Malaysia’s crude birth rate has dropped to 15.5 per cent per 1,000 people in 2018, from 15.9 per cent in 2017.

The decline is in line with birth rates in industrialised countries such as Australia (1.8), the United Kingdom (1.8) and the United States (1.8); and below the rates of developing countries such as Indonesia (2.1), the Philippines (2.4) and Nigeria (5.3).

The average age of mothers having their first baby, meanwhile, increased to 27.8 years in 2018, from 27.7 years in 2017, Mohd Uzir said.

The report showed that the highest crude birth rate in Malaysia was recorded in Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, where there were 30.5 live births per 1,000 people; while Bagan Datuk, Perak had the lowest rate of 2.9.

Source: NST