The idea of 70 million Malaysian by the year 2020

You know, when I hear this from Tun Dr Mahathir, I was clapping happily. Because I was really thinking that Malaysia needs to have more population to support our economy by itself. As example, let’s have one country that is small in size but big in population which support its own economy. The country is JAPAN.

Japan is a small country (land area: 374,744 sq km), a little bit bigger than the size as Malaysia (land area: 328,550 sq km). However, their population is 127,433,494 (as of July 2007) about 5.5 times more than Malaysia. When does Japan have their baby-boom? The answer is, during World War II (WWII) and after WWII. What does this have in common with other countries that have big population like China, India and United States? This baby-booming activity happened during and after war, when a country is on a very fragile and vulnerable condition. During these times, people do not have job, therefore they don’t have anything to do and they make babies. Same goes to United States during WWI and WWII. China had their baby-boom a little earlier and those earlier babies, when they grow-up, they also produce more than average number of babies. The same case goes to India.

So, what is so different when Tun proposed Malaysia to have 70 million Malaysians by the year 2020? The differences are, it was proposed during no war, thriving economy, politically stable and people living in harmony. I bet now you can see that he was proposing to have a baby-boom during good times. It is totally upside-down, 180 degrees different. See that?

When we have job, there is income to support our family. When we have income, we can opt for good facility for the wives to deliver the babies. Thus, we can improve our infant mortality rate. When our infant mortality rate is lower, there is no waste of babies (excuse me of this term) who are born every year. When we have thriving economy, we can provide good education to them. Good education leads to quality human capital. Quality human capital leads to continuous booming economy, a knowledge-based economy. You can compare that to having babies deliver during hard times like war time. High infant mortality rate, sad parents when knowing their baby has little chance to survive. Even if they survived, good food, good education cannot be provided because their country is in war. This will lead to poor human resources of that country. Then, the country will have to struggle to support their citizens. See the points?

Solutions
How to make Malaysians produce a lot of Babies?
1. Make it easier to get married - parents must ease of the traditions.
In a country like Malaysia, where traditions is still being considered, parents must let their children marry easily. When parents see their child’s girl/boyfriend has a good quality characters (responsible, has a job, caring, etc) ask them to get married right-away. Traditions becoming number 2. Their children marriage is highest priority.

2. Government must make it easier to register marriage.
Right now, we have to go thru a heck of procedures to register marriage. For Malays, being the majority populations, have to go to their registered IC religious office to get some signatures, etc. This makes marriage difficult. For the Malaysian-Chinese and Malaysian-Indian, I am not so sure. Maybe the registration is easy, but the road-map until the registration is painstaking. Therefore, I would like to suggest to the government to allow couples who is ready to get married, to legally register their marriage at the chain of post-offices in Malaysia. Of course, the registrar of Malay, Malaysian-Chinese and Malaysian-Indian must be station there (new job created already). And, for couples to register, they have to bring their parents together for registration. Everybody signed the documents and wallah! one couple married. The ceremony can be prepared after that when the couple is capable to hold the ceremony. Or parents can help them make preparation. The point here is for couples to marry legally. Can you imagine how many young Malaysians will sigh relief when they hear this news from the Government?

3. Parents are not to be excessively materialistic.
In this age, not the children are the one who is materialistic, but the parents. It is understandable that the parents want the best for their children, but when it comes to ‘excessive-valuation’, it makes the child sad and blaming their parents for not accepting their future life-partner. As I said, ff the child’s girl/boyfriend is responsible, has a job and purely cares and loves for their child, ask them to get marry.

4. Incentives from Government on having many children
Now we have tax deduction per child for our personal income tax. Government can enact a new law which a family of 8 children and above will be waived of paying any personal income tax. Malaysian will be very happy to have a big family. Government does not have to worry about their source of income (due to loss of income from big families) because economy of scale by having big population will automatically support the economy. Government will be happy as well.

All of the above 4 solutions will propel Malaysia to achieve 70 million population by 2020. By simple maths, if all married couple in the range of 20-45 year old now, which is about 60% of our population (that is about 14 million people, divide by 2) 7 million couples to have 10 children per couple, we will have 70 million children age 10 by 2020. Plus existing population age 0-19 year old of about 5 million; we can have 75 million young populations by 2020. Don’t forget that by 2020 we will be a develop country.

PJ-Investor.