Alternative poverty lines for Malaysia

Abstract

Because of the shortcomings of the Malaysian official poverty line, this paper offers several alternative regional poverty line estimations with varying underlying assumptions. Using the Household Expenditure Survey 2004/2005, poverty lines are estimated based on the consumption patterns of 10th and 20th percentile household per capita expenditure. The regional poverty lines from these reference groups produced robust poverty measurement rankings across regions in the country. We suggest that the poverty lines from both reference groups be used as lower and upper poverty lines for the country.