{"id":2179,"date":"2008-07-09T23:35:22","date_gmt":"2008-07-09T15:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/borninmalaysia\/2008\/07\/09\/household-income-distribution\/"},"modified":"2008-07-09T23:35:46","modified_gmt":"2008-07-09T15:35:46","slug":"household-income-distribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/borninmalaysia\/2008\/07\/09\/household-income-distribution\/","title":{"rendered":"Household income distribution"},"content":{"rendered":"
Dr Michael J Devaraj (conqueror of Samy Vellu), MP for Sungai Siput was praised by the Assembly Speaker recently as among the MPs who ask good questions. He asked the following today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

My question is, why did the government stress the disparities between ethnic groups while staying silent on the inequalities between the rich and the poor within every ethnic group which contributes by far to inequalities generally?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was in response to MP Amirsham’s reply on the income distribution for households. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"householdincome.gif\"<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Taken from Malaysiakini<\/a>.<\/div>\n
– 8.6 percent of households earn below RM1,000
– 29.4 percent of households earn between RM1,000 and RM2,000
– meaning, 38 percent of households in Malaysia earn RM2,000 and below.<\/p>\n

– 19.8 percent of households are in the RM2001-RM3,000 income bracket
– RM3,001-RM4,000 (12.9 percent)
\n– RM4,001-RM5,000 (8.6 precent)
\n– meaning, 41.3 percent are in the RM2000-RM5000 bracket<\/p>\n

– about 20.7 percent of households earn more than RM5,000 a month
– RM5,001-RM10,000 (15.8 percent)
– above RM10,000 (4.9 percent).<\/p>\n

The source and period of the statistics is not provided, but it should be not before 2004 and not later than 2007. The number of households is also not provided.<\/p>\n

Looking at the results, we have 38% of household earning RM2000 and below. If a household has 4 people, it will be diffcult to live in urban area. Nearly 58% of the households earn RM3000 and below.<\/p>\n

With poverty line set at RM600-RM700 range, we can understand why the poverty rate is low. Unfortunately, the income is always insufficient to match the ever increasing cost of living. If poverty line is increased to RM1000, then 8.6% of the households will be poor. However there have been calls to increase poverty rate to RM1500, which may reveal that up to 24% of the household are poor. <\/p>\n

Another issue is that many are resorting to part-time or second (and even third) jobs to supplement income. These are usually not revealed or reported in order to avoid taxation, punishment (by employer), or to purposely show their “poverty”. <\/p>\n

Anyway, I’m not sure if household income is a good parameter. Individual income statistics should be tabulated as well.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Michael J Devaraj (conqueror of Samy Vellu), MP for Sungai Siput was praised by the Assembly Speaker recently as among the MPs who ask good questions. He asked the following today: My question is, why did the government stress the disparities between ethnic groups while staying silent on the inequalities between the rich and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[115,154,104],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borninmalaysia","tag-economy","tag-poverty","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}