Inequality and Poverty in Malaysia: Measurement and Decomposition

This report gives a perspective on Malaysia, by tracing the development and importance of ethnic pluralism in the country. This pluralism has led the government to show special concern for racial income, distribution and, more generally, for racial economic disparities. The income distribution data used in this study were collected through the Post-Enumeration Survey (PES) of 1970. A comparison shows that the PES is the best source of income data to date on household and individual incomes in Malaysia. The broad features of the PES household income distribution show overall inequality in Malaysia to be fairly high. The individual income distributions show large inequalities within the racial groups. These suggest that racial income disparities may be only part of a much wider problem of income inequality in the country. A profile of poverty in Malaysia is constructed, which identifies the poor in terms of socioeconomic variables such as race, location, employment status, occupation, and education. Such information is useful not only in understanding better the correlates and circumstances of poverty, but also in identifying areas of government intervention for the redress of poverty. The reports concludes if there are no data on the distribution of physical wealth among individuals in Malaysia, the breakdown of the personal income distribution by employment status does shed some light on the distribution of capital assets.

[1]  S. Jain.  Size distribution of income : a compilation of data , 1977 .

[2]  Michael Stepson.  Class and race in West Malaysia , 1976 .

[3]  S. Kolm.  The Optimal Production of Social Justice , 1969 .

[4]  B. S. Rowntree,et al.  Poverty, A Study of Town Life , 1901 .

[5]  U. A. Aziz,et al.  Poverty and rural development in Malaysia , 1963 .

[6]  Joseph E. Stiglitz,et al.  The Theory of "Screening," Education, and the Distribution of Income , 1975 .

[7]  Nicholas Stern,et al.  Welfare weights and the elasticity of the marginal valuation of income , 1977 .

[8]  Maurice G. Kendall,et al.  The advanced theory of statistics , 1945 .

[9]  R. N. Jackson.  Immigrant labour and the development of Malaya, 1786-1920 : a historical monograph , 1961 .

[10]  B. Cham.  Class and communal conflict in Malaysia , 1975 .

[11]  Malaysia..  Second Malaysia plan, 1971-1975 , 1971 .

[12]  O. D. Hoerr.  Education, Income, and Equity in Malaysia , 1973, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[13]  I. Adelman,et al.  Income Distribution Policy in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Korea , 1978, The Journal of Asian Studies.

[14]  A. Fishlow.  Brazilian Size Distribution of Income , 1972 .

[15]  R. S. Milne.  The Politics of Malaysia's New Economic Policy , 1976 .

[16]  K. Hinchliffe,et al.  Returns to Education: An International Comparison. Studies on Education; Vol. 2. , 1973 .

[17]  M. Rothschild,et al.  Some further results on the measurement of inequality , 1973 .

[18]  N. Kakwani,et al.  On the Estimation of Lorenz Curves from Grouped Observations , 1973 .

[19]  V. Purcell,et al.  The Chinese in Malaya , 1949 .

[20]  J. Mincer.  The Distribution of Labor Incomes: A Survey with Special Reference to the Human Capital Approach , 1970 .

[21]  Stephen A. Marglin.  Public Investment Criteria , 1967 .

[22]  C. Hirschman.  Ethnic stratification in West Malaysia , 1972 .

[23]  J. Mirrlees.  An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation an Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation L Y 2 , 2022 .

[24]  T. Sri,et al.  An introduction to the Constitution of Malaysia , 1972 .

[25]  Graham Pyatt,et al.  On the interpretation and disaggregation of GINI coefficients , 1976 .

[26]  W. Roff.  The Origins of Malay Nationalism , 1967 .

[27]  Y. Ben-Porath.  The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings , 1967, Journal of Political Economy.

[28]  Lyn Squire,et al.  Economic Analysis of Projects , 1976 .

[29]  A. Sen,et al.  Notes on the measurement of inequality , 1973 .

[30]  J. Aitchison,et al.  The Lognormal Distribution. , 1958 .

[31]  R. Goldman.  Staple Food Self-Sufficiency and the Distributive Impact of Malaysian Rice Policy , 1975 .

[32]  D. Champernowne,et al.  On Economic Inequality. , 1974 .

[33]  T. Nagel,et al.  Equality and preferential treatment , 1977 .

[34]  Yukon Huang.  Tenancy Patterns, Productivity, and Rentals in Malaysia , 1975, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[35]  Luc de Wulf.  Fiscal Incidence Studies in Developing Countries: Survey and Critique (Etude sur l'incidence de la politique budgétaire dans les pays en voie de développement: examen analytique et critique) (Estudios de incidencia fiscal en los países en desarrollo: Investigación y crítica) , 1975 .

[36]  J. Mincer,et al.  Time-Series Changes in Personal Income Inequality in the United States from 1939, with Projections to 1985 , 1972, Journal of Political Economy.

[37]  Hajime Wago,et al.  The Measurement of Income Inequality , 1978 .

[38]  Julius K. Nyerere,et al.  Rural development , 2019, The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific.

[39]  V. M. Rao.  Two Decompositions of Concentration Ratio , 1969 .

[40]  Vinayak Mahadev Dandekar,et al.  Poverty in India , 1971 .

[41]  Charles R. Clark Peter B. Taylor Lance Blitzer,et al.  Economy-Wide Models and Development Planning , 1975 .

[42]  C. P. Brown.  Rice price stabilization and support in Malaysia , 1973 .