Recent fertility trends in West Malaysia

Abstract

In the last decade, there has been a dramatic reduction in West Malaysian fertility. Between 1957 and 1966, official government statistics record that the crude birth rate declined from 46.2 to 37.3 -a decrease of nineteen percent.' Whereas comparable large fertility changes in Hong Kong in the years 1961-1965 were recently shown to be primarily due to changes in the age structure of the population, we believe that most of the decline in West Malaysia has resulted from real changes in the fertility of married women. A rapid shift in the proportion of women married in the youngest ages of the childbearing years has also been an important * Dr. Cho is Senior Demographic Adviser to the National Family Planning Board of Malaysia and Research Associate, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan. Dr. Palmore is Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan, and Research Associate of the University's Population Studies Center. Mr. Saunders is a Program Officer of the Ford Foundation. This study was made possible by support from the Ford Foundation. The authors wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the National Family Planning Board of Malaysia in providing data from the West Malaysian Family Survey which was carried out by the Department of Statistics, Malaysia, under the auspices of the Board. Appreciation is also extended to the Department of Statistics for the use of data from the 1957 Census of Population, vital statistics reports, and the Malaysian Socio-Economic Survey. Professor Ronald Freedman kindly reviewed an earlier draft of this report and made many valuable comments.