Malaysian men getting married later in life

PETALING JAYA: Malaysian men are getting married later with the oldest tying the knot at the ripe age of 91 last year.

This is among the findings of a report on marriage and divorce released for the first time by the Department of Statistics Malaysia.

In line with the current trend of getting married later in life, the median age for men tying the knot was 29 last year compared to 28 in 2016.

No reason was given for the delay in getting married.

For women, the median age of marriage remained at 26, the Chief Statisticians Office said in a statement highlighting the reports key findings.

The report covers marriages and divorces in 2016 and 2017 and is divided by state, race, age group and ethnic group.

While the oldest man to get married was 91, the oldest woman to get hitched last year was 84.

Muslims got married earlier with the median marriage age for men at 27 compared to 30 for others and as for women, the median marriage age for Muslims was 26 compared to 28 for non-Muslims.

The report said the number of marriages fell 4.9% from 200,274 in 2016 to 190,532 last year.

This means that the marriage rate per 1,000 population fell from 6.3% in 2016 to 5.9% in 2017.

A piece of good news is that the overall number of divorces also fell from 51,642 in 2016 to 49,965 last year.

For Muslims, the number of divorces fell from 41,030 in 2016 to 39,709 last year, which means that the divorce rate per 1,000 Muslims fell slightly from 2.1 to 2.0.

The number of Non-Muslim divorces was also slightly fewer in 2016 with 10,612 compared to 10,256 last year, which saw the divorce rate per 1,000 non-Muslims fell from 0.9 to 0.8.

The statement said that interethnic marriages fell by 9.2% last year from 2016, but did not provide any figures.