RESEARCH ON MALAYSIA GROWTH AND AGING POPULATION

Table 1: Population size and annual population growth rate, Malaysia, 2010-2019

“According to Universiti Malaya’s Social Wellbeing Research Centre, the number of Malaysians aged 60 and above is projected to reach 3.5 million in 2020 and 6.3 million in 2040 — about 20 per cent of the population.”

- (published by The New Straits Times, 2018)

“The government should develop an ageing-friendly healthcare system that focuses on prevention and less on costly hospital care. We must accept the fact that fast-growing elderly population will strain the healthcare system. Apart from building and improving hospitals and clinics, more geriatricians should be trained as there is only one geriatrician for every 100,000 older persons.”

- (published by The New Straits Times, 2018)

“Malaysia is at risk of becoming an “ageing population” when 7% of the total population is aged 65 and above, based on the definition set by the World Health Organisation. As of 2017, the number of people aged 65 and above in Malaysia was about two million or 6.3% of the total population, The report highlighted that another impact of the ageing population is increasing public expenditure. The higher life expectancy of the population, particularly pensioners and their dependents, tends to increase pension payments. Therefore, the current pension scheme may not be sustainable in the long run as it will pose a large financial burden on the government’s fiscal position.”

published by The Star, 2018

By referring to figure 2 and figure 3 above, it has indicated the problem of ageing population in Malaysia is indeed alarming rate. By referring to the international standards, Malaysia has now entered an aging society. Yet, our development of support and education system for the older persons has never been directly proportional to the development of the aging population.

There is demographic transition due to ethnic differentials in fertility and mortality declines at different rates. It leads to differences in population growth rates and population ageing among the ethnic groups. Ultimately, it leads to differences in dependency ratios among ethnic groups as shown in Table Il above.

Apart from ethnic groups, there are also regional differentials. The health of populations aged 60 and above, is far from homogenous. Frailty and dependency of senior citizens increase more rapidly after 70. Not only our population are growing older, the old themselves are living longer. Base on Table III (source: Department of Statistics), we able to see the proportion of population aged 70 increasing from 2.21 % in 1990 to 3.5% in 2020. Disproportion between the number of males to females also increases with ageing. Projected increases between 1990 and 2020 in the number of aged persons in Malaysia are 1.01 million for males and 1.20 for females. The sex ratio (number of men per 100 women) will decrease from 90.1 in 1990 to 85.8 in 2020. Thus there will be an increasing predominance of women among the aged population in Malaysia (Table 111).