The present population of Malaysia is 27.17 million with an average population growth rate of 1.78% per year. The birth rate, however, has seen a slight decline recently from roughly 19/1000 in 2004 to 18/1000 in 2007. The overall gender ratio is 1.01 male to every female. The average family is 5.4; rural families tend to be somewhat larger than urban ones. The life expectancy for a Malaysian male is 71.8 years; for a female it is 76.3 years. In the graphs opposite, taken from the Malaysian Department of Statistics, ‘Bumiputra’ translates loosely as ‘sons of the soil’. It means Malays and indigenous people collectively. ‘Other’ is a catch-all phrase for Malaysian citizens who are neither Bumiputra, Chinese or Indian. These include Eurasians, Arabs, Thais and other Asians, even though the family may have lived in Malaysia for generations.