Cost of living & Quality of life

Another reason why fertility rate is on the declining trend from year 2014 to 2015 in
Malaysia is because of the rising living standards and the rising cost of living for the recent
years (Thompson, 2015; Wall-Missouri, 2013). According to Ong (2015), she found that
some of the young couples are unable to undertake the high cost of living as they do not have
a stable job. The rising cost of living will directly affect the costs of having a child to increase
so they will plan to have fewer children due to the economic affordability so cause the
fertility rate in Malaysia to fall. Based on the surveys conducted by Andrea (2015), the
rising cost of living such as implementation of Goods and Service Tax (GST) in year 2015
has brought the declining fertility rate as 90% of its respondents declared that they think they
are unable to deal with their daily expenses. Therefore, most of the adults will consider not to
have their own children because raising a child is costly nowadays. For instance, foods,
tranportations as well as the daily expenses have became far more higher after GST
implementation.
Furthermore, Ong (2015) stated that young couples in Malasyia are too centralize
their mind over quality of life. So that, this will straightly increase the costs of raising a child
because they want the best for their instead of just struggling hard day to day only to feed
another mouth (Ong, 2015). For instance, the young couples want to provide their children
with the better quality housing, better education, better medical care or nutrition and they
also need to bear the cost of their childs daycare and other necessities that are best for their
children (Thompson, 2015). Due to young couples are demanding high quality of life, this
will lead them to having a smaller numbers of children. In time, the birth rate in Malaysia
will drop.
Low marriage rate and late marriage
Recently, Malaysia has facing serious dilemma of lower marriage rate and late
marriage which will lead to the decreasing fertility rate. Other than that, for the low marriage
rate, as more women earned college degrees, entered the workforce and delayed motherhood,
marriage became less necessary for their economic survival. Women are more concerning
about if they have enough and stable economically and financially support instead of
depending on their life partner (Binson, 2014). There are coupled with the trend of marrying
late and an increasing amount of women who wish to stay single. This implies that women
may think that they can live a life independently without having a marriage. Furthermore, the

responsibilities that come with having a spouse and raising a family may deter a person who
would rather have more experiences before making such serious commitments. Based on the
survey conducted by Mustafa (2015), it found that the three principal reasons of late marriage
are unable to find a suitable partner, loaded with financial problems and thinking to have a
career advancement beforehand.
Besides, women are the majority who elect to pursue their education or careers as
they wish to start their families later in life (Mustafa, 2015). When a woman with a high
education level means that she may have to study from kindergarten until university level and
it may take longer time if compared with those no-schooling women. This may delay their
marriage therefore when they get married in older age they will not likely want to have
children and this may cause the lower fertility rate. Moreover, some of them prefer stay and
live together rather than getting married or having children.
Increase of female participation in higher education institutions
Based on Teo (2014), increase of female participations in higher education levels will
result lower fertility rate in Malaysia. According to Sipalan (2015), the minister declared that
most of the women are opting to pursue their education and careers first and making it as the
norm for them to marry later. This indicates that they need to confront with the issues of
childcare due to their responsibilities at work and it is hard for them to neutralize between
their careers and their domestic duties of being a good spouse as well as being a good mother
to their children (Sipalan, 2015; Phua, n.d.). By right of this, they may try to avoid this kind
of double-burden stress and so they will plan not to have children and so cause the fertility
rate in Malaysia to decrease.
According to Subramaniam & Saleh (2016), highly educated women always fall into
dilemma between self-satisfaction and family which may cause the fertility rate to drop.
Higher education is associated with higher income such as the higher the education
institutions of a person, the higher the income they will get from employment. For the young
females with high education with highly paid salaries, they may not want to leave their job
until they have passed the reproductive age. In time, this will bring to low fertility rate in
Malaysia.

Higher divorce rate

In Malaysia, a whopping 56,760 divorces were recorded, which equivalent to a marriage is
breaking down every 10 minutes in 2012 (Boo, 2014). People are losing confident to their
marriage and refuse to have a children. This is to avoid complicate procedure and
responsibility during divorce process in the future. Furthermore, expectation of a life- minded
partner are too high, as women wish to marry a wealthy husband, while a man wish to marry
a virtuous wife. A person comes from different background and experience creates different
value and view. The higher the expectation, the more disappointment receives (Dennis &
Rainey, 2008). Obviously, when a person never met his or her own expectation, they are more
willing to be single rather than getting married.

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