THE 2026 RinggitPlus Malaysian Financial Literacy Survey (RMFLS) makes for rather uncomfortable and troubling reading.
It finds almost a full quarter of Malaysians aged 25 to 44 postponing or altogether forgoing marriage or a first child due to financial constraints.
The figure jumps to 28.9 per cent for those aged 25 to 34.
This latest survey flies in the face of assumptions that younger Malaysians are simply losing interest in marriage or parenthood. Earlier findings cited by the National Population and Family Development Board showed that 90.9 per cent of single respondents intended to marry, while 91.1 per cent hoped to have children.
For growing numbers of younger Malaysians, then, economic pressures are making aspirations of marriage and family harder to realise.
A worryingly large number are finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile the search for financial security with the desire to start a family.
Government efforts to encourage marriage and parenthood will have limited impact if the underlying barriers — housing affordability, stagnant wages, job insecurity and exorbitant childcare costs — remain unaddressed.
Financial incentives may help, but they cannot substitute for sustained policies designed to improve household incomes, expand affordable childcare and give working parents greater flexibility in the workplace.
Employers can and should do more by offering family-friendly workplaces and by not penalising employees with child-
caring responsibilities.
One way to ease financial pressures may be to encourage dual-income families.
However, we may be pursuing contradictory objectives, too, if, on the one hand, official policies encourage more women to join the workforce while the reality in the job market is that women of child-bearing age are among the last to be hired, all else being equal.
Would it not help if, for example, official policy gave both husbands and wives equal time off for child-bearing and child-caring? If the trend towards postponing or altogether forgoing marriage and child-bearing for financial reasons persists, the implications for the country may be grave.
It will inevitably lead to fewer and fewer babies being born and an acceleration of our already ageing population.
The bright spot in the RMFLS findings is that respondents take seriously their responsibility to support their parents and/or parents-in-law, with a majority of even those earning RM2,000 and below contributing monetarily to ageing parents.
This is another area where official policies may be tweaked, with the government stepping in to relieve younger Malaysians financially through assistance to older Malaysians who have meagre or no monthly pensions to depend on.
Younger Malaysians should not be put in a situation where they have to choose between financial stability and starting a family. Rather than lecturing them about family values, policy-makers need to create the conditions in which marriage and parenthood become financially viable choices.
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