The 5 Year Itch

I was back at work yesterday after a 3 week leave. I think I took too a long a leave and it took a while for the brain to move to its normal speed. The last time I took anything longer than a week was to go to Scotland for my second Masters degree convocation and that was back in 2002.

Anyway, I saw two interesting books on my table courtesy of my good friend, the head honcho of JPKE, the Brunei Annual Statistics Book 2007 and the Brunei Vital Statistics 2003-2007. The Annual Statistics Book is as always contained all the statistics that you ever wanted to know about Brunei. But the Vital Statistics had some interesting statistics.

The Vital Statistics provides time series data for 6 years of the live births, deaths, marriages and divorces in Brunei. If you are involved in planning and needed these statistics, this book is indeed vital (my pun!) for you to get.

I read through it and I was struck by the interesting data provided in the marriages and divorces statistics. Did you know that in 2007, out of 457 divorces, 119 involved wives who are aged between 25-29 and 98 involved wives who are aged 30-34. Similar ages for husbands. And out of that 457 divorces, the highest number occurs when the marriages are 5 years old. I know there is a 7 year itch but I did not realise in Brunei it is the 5 year itch.

There were 2,176 marriages in 2007 of which 740 are for brides aged between 20-24 and 780 aged between 25-29 and about 234 aged between 30-34. What was interesting too is that the number of births have declined every year since 2002. In 2002 there were 7,464 births but by 2007 there were only 6,314 births. Interestingly, regardless of what you think, whether there are more females or males in Brunei, male births outnumber female births in those years.

Anyway, if you are interested in all these statistics, the book is available at JPKE at Ong Sum Ping. I don't know how much it is. The last one (2002 edition) before this one cost $7, so it would probably be around that price range too.