Abstract
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.
Highlights
One of the main tasks in eradicating poverty would be to define poverty while understanding the different dimensions of poverty; and to identify who are the poor based on the definition
The current definition of poverty that is employed by the many policy-makers, governments and researchers are simplified to absolute poverty and relative poverty
Absolute poverty is largely based on the nutritional needs of a household, while relative poverty refers to poverty relative to the standard of living of society where the household lives (United Nations Development Programme, 2007)
Summary
One of the main tasks in eradicating poverty would be to define poverty while understanding the different dimensions of poverty; and to identify who are the poor based on the definition. The per capita income increased to US$14,700 in 2010, up from US$13,900 in 2009 These achievements made Malaysia an upper middle income country, a situation that reflected the rapid economic growth that had been sustained since the government introduced a number of policies that support the effort towards poverty eradication and community restructuring (Zainuddin, 2011). The main mission and goal of the Malaysian economy in the 21st century might have to shift from eradicating poverty to uplifting the middle-income group to a high-income group This is especially true as the per capita income has been forecasted to increase from US$9,693 in 2011 to US$10,296 in 2013 (Economic Planning Unit, 2012)
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