Good governance and sound economic policies are believed to have reduced the disparity of income between the rich and the poor, said a research, citing that the gap has been narrowing since the 1970s.
Allen Ng, from Khazanah Research Institute, said the Gini coefficient – the index to measure income disparity – reduced to 0.39 last year form 0.51 in 1970. The smaller the figure, the narrow the disparity.
“One reason why Malaysia did well or rather okay is because of our good policies and also due to the rapid industrialisation period of mid-80s to late 90s,” Ng said when presenting his papers titled “Inequality in Malaysia”.
Tertiary education, he said, was also a factor in determining a person’s income.
“But then again, the access to tertiary education will become a question of social mobility.
“Generally, however, education plays a role and those with tertiary education are said to earn more and thus this have reduce the gap between the middle class groups,” he said.
