Preliminary Census 2010 Report

This actually came out last week, but I’ve been too bum lazy to touch on it. But the results, as preliminary as they are, yield some pretty interesting information – and not just for the population numbers:

If there’s proof that Malaysia is on the cusp of a demographic transition, where a higher proportion of the population is entering working age and dependency ratios falling – this is it. Long term, this means somewhere between 1%-2% higher intrinsic growth over the coming decades. To underscore this trend, household sizes have also dropped in the past thirty years:

It’s interesting to look at the differences between the different states, which generally confirms the stylised fact that rural households are much larger than urban ones – or if you prefer, richer households tend to be smaller than poorer ones:

I’ve included here the two states with the highest and lowest household sizes (excluding the Federal Territories, which are highly urbanised). Both Penang and Selangor have average household sizes below 4, while Sabah has an average household size nearing 6. Kelantan is more representative of the other states, though a little higher than average.

There’s no estimate of the urbanisation rate in this preliminary report, but there’s little doubt that there’s been an increase – the expectations are that urbanisation reached 70% in 2010, and will increase further to 75% by 2020 (from the NEM document). With the exception of Sabah (higher) and Penang (lower), the other states with high population growth rates are the usual suspects: Selangor, Johor, and Melaka, and Putrajaya and KL among the Federal Territories.

The other interesting thing I’ve found is that the Census includes an enumeration of living quarters – housing in other words. I’ve been concerned in the past that the stock of housing might have reached a saturation point relative to the population:

The Census gives us more accurate data to get a feel for potential housing demand:

…which tells approximately the same story. How to interpret this is that a higher ratio should lead to demand pressure on prices, while a lower ratio suggests over supply. The really useful info is to be found in the state-by-state breakdown of these ratios:

	1980	1991	2000	2010
Malaysia	96%	87%	86%	87%
Johor	94%	84%	82%	85%
Kedah	92%	84%	86%	85%
Kelantan	94%	88%	87%	89%
Melaka	93%	84%	77%	82%
Negeri Sembilan	86%	80%	77%	76%
Pahang	91%	88%	90%	87%
Perak	97%	85%	82%	84%
Perlis	95%	90%	89%	86%
Pulau Pinang	105%	93%	79%	82%
Sabah	95%	91%	92%	92%
Sarawak	98%	90%	89%	91%
Selangor	94%	86%	93%	88%
Terengganu	91%	88%	87%	88%
WP Kuala Lumpur	111%	92%	87%	93%
WP Labuan	86%	96%	88%	91%
WP Putrajaya	-	83%	54%	78%

Cross reference these ratios with state population growth rates:

	1980	1991	2000	2010
Malaysia	-	2.64%	2.60%	2.17%
Johor	-	2.45%	2.47%	2.21%
Kedah	-	1.72%	2.09%	1.85%
Kelantan	-	2.89%	0.96%	1.26%
Melaka	-	1.14%	1.98%	2.65%
Negeri Sembilan	-	2.08%	2.00%	1.84%
Pahang	-	2.79%	1.80%	1.61%
Perak	-	0.67%	0.55%	1.35%
Perlis	-	2.17%	0.84%	1.35%
Pulau Pinang	-	1.52%	1.62%	2.11%
Sabah	-	5.67%	3.92%	2.34%
Sarawak	-	2.59%	2.24%	1.86%
Selangor	-	4.31%	6.03%	3.17%
Terengganu	-	3.43%	1.54%	1.43%
WP Kuala Lumpur	-	2.00%	1.46%	2.20%
WP Labuan	-	6.54%	2.97%	1.85%
WP Putrajaya	-	-	7.74%	17.77%

…and you should get an angle on potential housing price pressures, at least those relating to overall demand.

Selangor’s high population growth rate and high housing to living quarters ratio suggests fundamental support for housing price increases (duh!). I won’t spell out the rest, except to point out two cases: Melaka’s high growth rate offsets a relatively high housing stock (you could also argue that there’s also considerable holiday and seasonal housing in that state), while Penang’s housing market looks problematical.

Technical Notes:

Preliminary Count Report, Population and Housing Census, Malaysia, 2010 from the Department of Statistics