KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 9 – The declining percentage of live births in Malaysia, which dipped by 2.8 per cent in the third quarter (Q3) of 2023 from the corresponding period last year, is indicative of a trend going back to at least 2020, according to the Demographic Statistics released by the Statistics Department Malaysia (DOSM).
In total, 110,354 live births were recorded in Q3 of this year, compared to Q3 of 2022, which had 113,506 live births.
Selangor recorded the highest number of live births with 20,648 births (18.7 per cent), while Wilayah Persekutuan Labuan recorded the lowest live births with 375 births (0.3 per cent)
The number of live births has fallen annually at least since 2020, based on DOSM’s Children Statistics, Malaysia, 2023 report. Between 2020 and 2021 live births dipped by 6.7 per cent from 471,504 to 439,744.
From 2021 to 2022, the number of live births declined by 3.8 per cent from 439,744 to 423,124 live births.
Overall, between 2020 and 2022, the percentage of live births went down by 10.3 per cent.
Boys have continued to outnumber girls in live births, a pattern that has persisted at least for the last three years, according to the DOSM report.
In Q3 of this year, 57,260 boys were born in live births compared to 53,094 girls. More boys were also born in live births in Q3 of 2022 (58,659) compared to girls (54,847).
And in the last three years, from 2020 to 2022 boys accounted for almost 52 per cent of live births every year.
Most mothers who had live births in Q3 of 2022 (54,571) and Q3 of 2023 (54,451) were in the 30 to 39 years age group.
A significant number of them (51,507 in Q3 2022) and (48,501 in Q3 2023) were from the 20 to 29 age group, while slightly over 5,100 mothers in Q3 of both years aged 40 and above had live births.
There were over 2,000 mothers aged 20 and under who had live births in both Q3 of 2022 and 2023.
