Malaysia: 30 years of poverty reduction, growth and racial harmony (original) (raw)
Poverty in Malaysia: Need for a Paradigm Shift
Malaysia aspires to be a developed nation by 2020 and if these development ambitions are to be attained Malaysia needs to reexamine its past approaches to reducing poverty and inequalities in the country. Malaysia is no longer just grappling with absolute poverty but also with relative poverty, pockets of persistent poverty and urban poverty as well as increasing inequalities. While rural poverty still continues to be the focus of policymakers, urban poverty also needs urgent policy attention and prescriptions. Stubborn pockets of poverty continue to elude policy solutions and new forms of poverty are emerging in the context of a country that sees itself as a developed nation by 2020. Close attention has to be paid to income distribution as progress towards poverty reduction is marred unless improvements in income distribution occur alongside poverty reduction. A paradigm shift is needed in the way in which poverty is conceptualized, defined and measured in Malaysia as the reinterpretation of the Poverty and Income distribution data over the last three decades shows that poverty in Malaysia retains much of its original characteristics and income distribution patterns show inter ethnic inequalities remaining and a worsening position for certain ethnic groups. The call for a paradigm shift is further reinforced by the new development direction that is encapsulated in the New Economic Model with its focus on inclusive development and the bottom 40% of the population. Malaysia has made numerous proclamations of its aspirations to achieve developed country status by 2020. While these aspirations are laudable, there are several issues that have to be resolved before the nation joins the ranks of developed countries. Among the pressing issues that need to be addressed
Poverty Reduction Policies in Malaysia: Trends, Strategies and Challenges
Asian Culture and History, 2013
Malaysia is a multi-ethnic religious country with a population of 28.5 million, it is characterised by mainly three ethnic groups-Malay and indigenous people, Chinese, and Indians. Ever since independence in 1957, Malaysia has successfully transformed itself from a poor country into a middle-income nation. The Malaysian economy has seen a periodic growth despite challenging external factors. It can also definitely claim its success of combat against poverty. Despite its poverty reduction success, there still remains a vulnerable group of people in the country experiencing poverty for some geographical and societal reasons. This concept paper has several objectives: A brief description of the country's nature of poverty, poverty reduction policies and programs, and an analysis facing the challenges and recommendations for a sustainable poverty reduction in Malaysia.
2019
This paper provides a systematic assessment of the alleged exceptionality of Malaysia’s development progress and its likely explanations, in a comparative perspective. Using cross-country regressions and aggregate indices of education, health, poverty and gender equality outcomes, we offer three findings. First, we provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that Malaysia’s human development progress has been exceptional compared with that of countries with a similar level of economic development, primarily for the 1970s and 1980s, so showing that progress has early origins. Next, we show that such progress is explained by a combination of income-mediated and support-led mechanisms, including Malaysia’s early emphasis on education and health inputs and infrastructure development. Finally, we argue that an early advantage in state capacity, vis-a-vis other countries of similar income level, may be at the origin of Malaysia’s successful implementation of poverty-reduction and growth-en...
Malaysia's experience with poverty reduction: Lessons for Bangladesh
Malaysia is experiencing a prominent and promising economic rise and has set many instances of development of not only social enterprises but also a total development. This paper is penned with a view to approaching some facts and figures concerned to the Development Policy of Malaysia, and then to furnish some policy prescriptions for the development of Bangladesh. This is all through a conceptual paper where the review of relevant literatures has been made. It has been evidenced that, in 37 years, poverty incidence has dropped about 48.4%. Not only that, the incidence has come down at 1.
MALAYSIA TOWARDS ZERO POVERTY BY 2020
Since 1970, Malaysia have been adopted various policies to reduce poverty and address the socio-spatial inequality. These policies managed to reduce poverty rate from 52.4% in 1970 to 1.7 % in 2012. However, inequalities and disparity among regions and ethnic groups have not been properly addressed. Policies that worked well nationally might not be suitable to be used in addressing poverty at local level. Thus, this paper aims to critically look at the strengths and weaknesses of such policies particularly in eliminating poverty. The paper is based heavily on the review of the recent literature and the data gathered from Economic Planning Unit-EPU and the Department of Statistics, Malaysia. Empirical experiences have shown that Malaysia has managed to reduce poverty beyond the declaration of MDG; halving poverty by 2015. However several issues need to be addressed as the country aim to be a developed nation with zero poverty as indicated in its vision 2020. Although the slogan "growth with equity" was used, spatial disparities were found among region such as between Sabah and Penang. Penang State, which has experienced steady economic growth, has implemented top-up model of eliminating poverty where families earned less than poverty income line received top-up income from the state government since 2013, claimed to have zero poverty rate. However, the sustainability of this approach is questionable. In addition to that, the sign of incidence of poverty between rural and urban and among ethnic minorities is quite clear. This inequality with external factors (illegal migration and global economy) poses some challenges for achieving the vision 2020. By evaluating the policies and analyzing regional disparities the paper will enrich the literature on poverty and help the planners to formulate sound poverty eradication polices
Poverty Eradication: Government Policies and Challenges to Eradicate Urban Poverty in Malaysia
Malaysia is moving forward to become an industrialized and developed nation by the year 2020. In line with this transformation, it faces challenges related to phenomena of urban environment. The migration of people from rural areas and international immigrants give a strain on the economy as well as the society. The government continues to implement appropriate strategies and programs by providing a variety of needs such as food, clothing, water, education and accesses to services such as health facilities and public transport since the 1970s. Although the programs succeeded in reducing the poverty rate from 21.3 percent in 1970 to 1.0 percent in 2012, there are still many things to be considered in order to overcome the new urban poverty phenomenon. Abstrak Malaysia meletakkan harapan yang sangat tinggi untuk menjadi sebuah negara maju pada tahun 2020. Seiring dengan itu, Malaysia berhadapan dengan cabaran yang berkaitan dengan fenomena persekitaran bandar. Penghijrahan penduduk lu...
The Developing World and Development Issues: Interrogating the Development Trajectory of Malaysia
WILBERFORCE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
The development strides’ taken by the state and leadership of Malaysia over the last four decades are worth commending. Her high growth rate is consistent with high GDP, high GNI per Capita, low poverty indices, improvement in the quality of life, income distribution, promotion of growth and equity, racial harmony, religious tolerance and political stability. Malaysia, under the current leadership of Prime Minister Najid Razak, has colonial realities that correspond with those of other colonized countries of the developing world and also inherited the colonial legacies enumerated in the development literature. Being in the same predicaments with her sister countries in the global south, Malaysia was also faced with the option of following the development routes suggested by the Bretton Woods Institutions or those of dependency scholars. However, Malaysia attempted a now successful path unique to her realities with a mixture of the values of prior development theories where necessary...
Income Inequality, Poverty and Development Policy in Malaysia
This paper examines income inequality and poverty in Malaysia. It is argued that government intervention under the New Economic Policy has been successful in generating economic growth and development of the country in general, and in the development of the Malay ethnic group in particular. Government intervention that begins in the 1970s has significantly reduced poverty, particularly poverty amongst the Malay ethnic group. Furthermore, the overall income inequality as well as interethnic and rural-urban inequality has also decline since the middle of 1970 to 1990. Since 1990 however, even though poverty has decline further, income inequality has started to rise. Besides there emerge a new dimension of inequality, that is intraethnic inequality. This paper argues that the existence of intra-ethnic inequality, particularly intra-Malay inequality, pose the major challenge to Malaysian policymakers. The reason is that, government intervention under the New Economic Policy is articulated in the political rhetoric of ethnicity, and it appears to be coherent in addressing the problem of poverty amongst the Malays when majority of them were in poverty. The New Economic Policy has significantly reduced poverty amongst the Malay, and there now exist a new problem of intra-Malay inequality. The existence of intra-Malay inequality suggests that deeper division amongst the Malay community has emerged, implying that there emerged diverse and conflicting interests within the Malay community itself. Continued use of ethnicity as the foundation of economic policy is no longer coherent, and hence could only be undertaken with the risk of greater discontent, paradoxically amongst the Malay community. In such a situation, government intervention that is articulated in the political rhetoric of ethnicity would be incoherent to solve this new problem of inequality.
Poverty Alleviation Policies in Malaysia and Nigeria: A review
Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal, 2021
Poverty in Malaysia and Nigeria as well as most developing countries are alarmingly visible. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in recent years of Malaysia and Nigeria has not reflected in the poverty alleviation efforts from the governments of both countries. The need to review the past policies on poverty alleviation in these developing nations prompted this paper. Using secondary data sources, the poverty alleviation policy in Malaysia has made significant progress, while Nigeria is still struggling. Interestingly, after decades of poverty alleviation policies, Malaysia has been moving forward steadily although there are identifiable challenges to overcome while in Nigeria, the policies seems to have no progress due to lack of political will. Keywords: Poverty Alleviation; Policy; Developing Countries eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (h...
Addressing Poverty through Innovative Policies: A Review of the Malaysian Experience
Good health, education, housing and access to the basic needs of life are basic human rights which often the poor are deprived of. Combating poverty is therefore a policy driven approach which requires innovative planning and execution. Since independence in 1957, Malaysia's policy goal focused on developing the infrastructure and improving the agricultural sector of the country. However, the watershed event of May 13, 1969 clearly vilified all previous efforts and recognized the need for a better approach to address issues of poverty, income equality and other basic physical and human rights for national development. Thus, the four long term policies from the New Economic Policy (1971-1990) to the New Economic Model (2011- 2020) and the five-year development plans has been put in placed in order to address poverty issues. Under the policies, there were broad and specific approaches and affirmative programs to alleviate poverty in the country, while working towards making Malaysia a high income nation by 2020, as envisioned in Vision 2020. Each successive policies and development plans saw great improvements in nation building efforts to improve the wellbeing of the population. This paper traces briefly the history of poverty alleviation attempts in Malaysia and discusses the policies and their impacts on the economy and social wellbeing. Each of the policies has their strengths and weaknesses and this paper seeks to share some of the innovative ideas and series of economic reforms to bring Malaysia to the level it is today. The last leg of the journey to achieve Vision 2020 necessitates uplifting of the bottom 40% to the ‘middle income group’. It further concludes on the call for a more rigorous intervention from the social work perspective.
STRATEGIES OF TACKLING POVERTY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF NIGERIA AND MALAYSIA
At the attainment of political independence, Nigeria and Malaysia have common historical antecedents, common economy, common political ideology, common ethnic groups. Today, Malaysia is progressing economically, technologically and politically to address its socioeconomic challenges such as poverty. On the contrary, Nigeria is struggling to find its feet. This study examines the strategies adopted and implemented by the policymakers to tackling poverty by the two countries. The paper adopts secondary data to juxtapose various strategies implemented by Nigeria and Malaysia governments to address poverty since the realization of political independence. The paper reveals that frequent reform of poverty intervention strategies, increase of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and allocation of huge resources for the implementation of the programs does not reflect the economic reality as poverty rate is consistently on the increase in Nigeria. Institutional failure such as bad governance, corruption, poor definition of the poor, high unemployment rate among others explain the poor performance of the intervention programs in Nigeria. On the other hand, the overall poverty rates of Malaysia have been reduced significantly over the years, yet, unequal wealth distribution and unemployment are the major challenges to Malaysian economy and poverty reduction. Therefore, it is suggested that, Malaysia should be firm to sustain its prominence and Nigeria should take a leaf from Malaysia by engaging, transparent, committed, and incorruptible credible leaders that will translate the economic growth to strengthen the resilience and capabilities of poor and vulnerable people. Finally, poverty could be alleviated when public policies are informed by mutual interest and driven by reliable data and political determination to rescue the poor from the brink of hopelessness and dejection.
Addressing Poverty in Sudan and Malaysia: A Story of Success and Constraints
Sudan and Malaysia have shown some socioeconomic similarities especially when it comes to the issue of addressing poverty. After independence, almost half of the entire population of both countries were living under poverty line. The successive national governments in both countries have embarked on eliminating the extreme poverty. The aim of this paper is to highlight the policies and programmes adopted and implemented by policymakers in both countries in addressing poverty. The overall objective is to uncover the secret of the success and constraints faced both countries in addressing poverty. To achieve such objective, the paper based mainly on a desk review of recent documents and review of some recent researches' result. The paper has come out with that the similarities between both countries manifested itself in that both are classified as Muslim countries, have an agricultural background, inherited the same legacy as been colonized by British, their communities consist of various ethnic groups and minorities with sharp spatial and ethnic inequalities in income and social class. Despite these, Malaysia has succeeded in reducing poverty from over fifty 52.4% in 1970 to around one per cent 1.2 % in 2015, while less progress has been made in side of Sudan. Moreover, unlike Sudan, Malaysia has managed to achieve the MDGs goals in halving a head before the time determined, while Sudan has long way and it seems impossible to fulfil such objective even after 2015. Our findings have shown that, formulated home-grown policies, rejecting imposed policies by international institutions (World Bank), availability and accessibility of up to date poverty data, ability to implement policies and above all the political will are the main drivers behind the secret of success in the side of Malaysia and vice versa for Sudan. Sudan like other countries has to follow the Malaysia model if the decision makers are serious in eliminating poverty. This paper may contribute to the ongoing discussion on poverty and open rooms for more comparative study between nations. Comparative study will help the planners in formulating rational policy, benefitting from exchanging ideas and learning from each.
Pockets of poverty in the northern states of Malaysia
Malaysian Journal of Society and Space
Despite Malaysia's tremendous economic growth and remarkable achievement in poverty reduction for the nation, pockets of poverty remain in certain regions. Pockets of poverty could be analysed using micro data when macro data is unable to provide a clear understanding on the existence of poverty. This study assesses the pockets of poverty in the Northern States of Malaysia. Northern States of Malaysia consist of Perlis, Kedah, Penang and Perak. The objectives of this paper are twofold: to identify pockets of poverty in the Northern States of Malaysia using household income data and to determine the factors that affect these pockets of poverty. Pockets of poverty in this region are investigated among strata, ethnic groups, income level and education. For this purpose, the National Poverty Line Income (PLI) is determined to specify the poor. Logistic probability function is estimated to assess factors that influenced poverty in the Northern States of Malaysia. This study uses the Household Income Survey (HIS) data for 2009 and 2012. From data analysis, it could be concluded that pockets of poverty exist among elderly, women, Bumiputera and those living in the rural areas. Logistic probability analysis indicates that variables that are statistically significant in influencing poverty are age, gender, location, education level, Chinese (ethnic group) and married (marital status). These findings are vital to develop appropriate policy orientation in targeting the correct group in solving poverty.
Poverty Measurement and Policy for Eradication: Malaysian Case
Scientific Studies Association (ILEM), 2015
Poverty is a social inequality that could not be eradicated completely yet, it can only be decreased by certain policies. In order to make policies to eradicate the poverty, it is our necessary to measure the poverty level. Measuring poverty is not an easy thing, there are several approaches that can be viewed to determine or measure the poverty. Because it is difficult to quantify the poverty, there should be a measuring tool that can cover all aspects of life. This results in the determination of who is categorized into poor. Poverty in Malaysia has been decreasing in a good way from year to year. In 1999 the poverty rate was 8.5% in Malaysia but then it fell to 5.7% in 2007 and 1.7% in 2014. This decrease has a correlation or relationship with the increase of the household income of RM5,000 in 2012 to RM5,900 in 2014. Poverty in Malaysia is measured nationally by the Poverty Line Index (PLI) with the monetary approach and Islamic Poverty Index (IPI). Both these measures have different indicators. However, the size of which is used nationwide is the Poverty Line Index (PLI), this measure is applied to make a variety of policies such as: the Economic Planning Unit (EPU).
Human Development Scenario of Malaysia: ASEAN and Global Perspective
Human development is one of the core considerations of a country’s level of development. This study focuses on the performance of development indicators highlighting Malaysian scenario among the ASEAN and some other countries of the world. Malaysia has achieved the 61st place in the world according to the performance of human development. In the Human Development Report (HDR) 2011, countries are divided into very high human development, high human development, medium human development and low human development. Malaysia has perceived a good position among the group of high human development countries and ASEAN countries. It has occupied third position among ASEAN countries according to GNI per capita and HDI rank. Income Gini-coefficient of Malaysia is comparatively higher meaning that larger income inequality prevailing in Malaysian nations but it can be noted that very few people of Malaysia live below poverty line just 3.8 percent. Malaysia’s position is quite good in term of ecological footprint, environmental performance index, renewable energy, fossil fuels, etc but still far behind from the very high human development countries. Moreover it has possessed the worst position among the ASEAN because of producing highest emission of carbon dioxide and green house gas. So it is really alarming that though Malaysia is one of the influential countries in the ASEAN but it has failed to achieve best position among the South East Asian countries. Moreover, in many case Malaysia’s position is still far away from the performance of different indicators of the developed countries of the world though Malaysia is committed to be a developed nation by 2020. So for transforming Malaysia as a developed nation it need to concentrate to accelerate a very good performance of human development indicators.
The report entitled “Malaysia – The Millennium Development Goals at 2010” con fi rmed that Malaysia had achieved most of its MDGs ahead of time while showing progress in moving towards some of the goals and targets that it has yet to achieve. This report, prepared by the UNDP in Malaysia in close cooperation with the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department, reaf fi rms the 2005 fi ndings that Malaysia’s achievements were indeed impressive in aggregate terms. Nonetheless, fi ndings in this report also acknowledged that Malaysia still lagged behind in areas such as maternal mortality, women in managerial positions and female political representation, HIV/AIDS and the persistence of tuberculosis at a relatively high level.