population Source: Singapore Department of Statistics Age distribution of resident population Source: Singapore Department of Statistics Population by sex and age (Census 30.VI.2020) Fertility and Mortality Source: Department of Statistics of Singapore: Population Trends, 2020 Current vital statistics Population by area Ethnic groups Post-independence In the post-independence period, the population of Singapore has been categorised into four main groups: Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Others. The CMIO system was first proposed in 1956 to organise the education system of Singapore by four national languages.Although population growth in Singapore was driven by immigration for a long period during the colonial period, the population increase in Singapore became dominated by native births in Singapore around the middle of the 20th century, and boomed after the Second World War. After Singapore became independent in 1965, the free movement of people between Malaysia and Singapore ended, and net immigration dropped to a low level of 24,000 in the decade of 1970–80 due to tighter control on immigration. However, the fertility of the Chinese population declined sharply after the post-war boom, while that of the Malays remained high. There was therefore a corresponding percentage increase of the Malay population, which rose to 14.5% in 1967 after a long period of continual decline. From the 1980s onwards, the policy on immigration changed; the number of immigrants increased sharply and became again an important factor in the growth of population in Singapore. By the 1990–2000 period, the number of migrants had overtaken the natural population increase, constituting nearly two-thirds of the decadal population increase with 640,571 net migrants including non-residents. While the racial composition of its citizens has been fairly constant in recent years, it shows a shift in the figures for its residents (citizens plus permanent residents). Fewer of the immigrants were Malays, therefore the percentage resident population of the Malays began to fall. Indian residents, however, rose to 9.2% in 2010 due to an increase in the number of Indians migrant workers (compared to 7.4% Indians in the figures for citizens). The population profile of the country changed dramatically after the relaxation of immigration policy, with a huge increase in the number of transient migrant workers. Official figures show that the number of foreigners on short-term permits (termed 'non-residents') has grown from 30,900 in 1970 to 797,900 in 2005, which translate roughly to a 24-fold increase in 35 years, or from 1% of the population in