The New Straits Times frontpaged an alarm: Barren Future. It will be our future if we do not stop the decline of our fertility rate.
Because two things are happening to Malaysia more or less simultaneously: babies per woman are dropping and the population of the elderly (65 years and above) is spiking. A lethal combination for any country.
A Malaysia with more grandparents than grandchildren, it may be. Not very good news for a country at the cusp of being a developed nation.
Grave are the consequences. One, Malaysia may have to rely on immigration to correct the imbalance. This comes with a parcel of problems as immigration-inundated nations like the United Kingdom will attest to.
Obviously, there are many positives in encouraging immigration, but uncontrolled, it may lead to minuses outweighing pluses.
Two, more grandparents than grandchildren means expensive healthcare for the government. It also means lower productivity growth.
Hisakazu Kato, in his opinion piece in The Japan Times, shows this by using data collected from 20 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries from 1980 to 2010. Three, we do not need economists to tell us that over the long haul, a declining population will affect a country’s economic growth.
What causes this decline in the rate of babies per woman? Firstly, women are choosing to go childless while they build their career. According to a BBC report quoting a study by The Lancet done in 2017, this is a worldwide trend. Cost of living and standard of living arguments are at play here.
The Lancet study findings support this. In less developed countries, such as Niger, Chad and Somalia — where building a career is less of an issue — women are having the most number of children. Fertility rates in the three countries, respectively are: 7.1, 6.7 and 6.1. The opposite is true in the UK and Western European countries where career is a priority: 1.7.
There is yet another argument at work here. Millennials seem to want a population decline. They say there isn’t enough food to feed the world’s population. Nor space to hold the nine billion expected in 2080. This is a Malthusian argument which should have been buried with the pessimistic economist. But it didn’t.
Now, here is how to kill it for good. Look around us. Innovation and technological advancements have increased not only the volume of food, but also the types of food. We have foods that never existed in the 1950s. Also, climate change notwithstanding, spade-to-fork cycle time too has been dramatically shortened.
More food in a shorter time must be a pleasing formula. The point is: there will always be enough to eat and live well. Unless, of course, we bomb ourselves to death.
What can be done to stop the slide? Mothers must be made to see that women can have their career and children, too. Either or is very old school thinking. Millennials, of all people, should know this.
Keeping the Malaysian fertility rate at least at the replacement level of 2.1 children is of national import, too. Because not every baby survives to adulthood.
Besides, as our Department of Statistics’ numbers for last year show, more male babies make it to the cradle than female ones. Mothers, you can stop the baby bust. Just go out and multiply.