POVERTY
3.1 Overview socio-economic policies – briefly discuss poverty, inequality of income distribution, unemployment and pollution.
➢ Poverty and income distribution are two socio-economic problem faced by Malaysia.
➢ We have other socio-economic problem such as unemployment and distribution.
➢ Poverty still exist in urban, rural, any state, and among ethnic. It is related to underdeveloped area, lack of infrastructure and poor health condition.
3.2 Poverty-definition and incidences
➢ What is poverty?
- Some perceive poverty in terms of extremities which include serious malnutrition, starvation and extreme deprivation of basic necessities of life such as food, shelter and clothing.
- Other view poverty as a state of insufficiency in obtaining basic necessities.
- Basic necessities of life vary according to the level of development, thus their degree of poverty varies.
- Most often, poverty is a situation where the people lack of income needed to acquire the minimum necessities of life. In Malaysia, there are 3 types of poverty :
(i) Absolute poverty (ii) Relative poverty (iii) Absolute hardcore poverty
➢ Poverty Line Income (PLI)
- PLI is defined as an income separates those who are poor from those who are not poor. Those earning below that are regarded as being in the state of poverty.
- The PLI is used to count the number of poor households and the incidence of poverty. It takes into account the minimum requirements of a household for three components: food, clothing and footwear and other non-food components such as rent, fuel and power transport and communication, health, education and recreation.
- To reflect changes in the price level (inflation), the poverty line income (PLI) is adjusted annually by taking into account changes in the Consumer Price index (CPI)