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Thursday, June 11, 2015

Outdated 11MP poverty index fails urban poor, says social activist

Putrajaya’s reliance on the multi-dimensional poverty index means some vulnerable people and households will not qualify for aid. – The Malaysian Insider file pic, June 11, 2015.Putrajaya’s reliance on the multi-dimensional poverty index means some vulnerable people and households will not qualify for aid. – The Malaysian Insider file pic, June 11, 2015.
Putrajaya risks failing its 11th Malaysia Plan goal to raise the livelihoods of the bottom 40% of society due to outdated methods of measuring poverty, said a social activist and academic.
Datuk Dr Denison Jayasooria said key elements in a new index which indicated whether a household was poor or vulnerable to slipping into poverty did not match Malaysia’s current development level.
Under the 11MP, Putrajaya will use a new index called the multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI). It has 11 indicators to measure whether a household is poor or vulnerable.
The problem was the indicators, he said, were old and would be relevant for the Malaysia of the 1970s, when there were high levels of absolute poverty and almost half of the population lived in rural areas.
“The index is not rigorous enough and does not delve deeper into the nature of current Malaysian society to measure deprivation of basic needs,” said Jayasooria, who is a senior fellow at UKM’s Institute of Ethnic Studies.
“The index’s indicators must reflect our level of development because we are no longer a country where you have huge numbers of people starving on the streets,” said Jayasooria, who studied poor and vulnerable groups under a variety of national organisations.
He said the 11MP’s emphasis on inclusive growth and income equality was commendable but stressed that Putrajaya would fall short of these aims if it did not recalibrate the index.
Good index, weak metrics
In 11MP, the aim of improving the livelihoods of the B40 is under strategy A1 of the third chapter titled “strengthening inclusivity towards a more equal society”.
The 11MP aims to double the average incomes of the B40, which total about 2.7 million households, from RM2,500 a month to RM5,000 by 2020.
The MPI was good tool for poverty eradication efforts, said Jayasooria and had been recommended by the United Nations.
The problem lies in the 11 indicators used for the index to measure deprivation or a household’s lack of access to certain basic needs.
According to 11MP, the index will help tell whether households are “vulnerable to or at risk of becoming multi-dimensionally poor”, based on whether they fail in one third of the indicators.
The indicators are groups in four dimensions, education, health, living standards and income. The deprivation indicators are:
* Education – any household member aged 17-60 has less than 11 years of education and any school-going children not attending school.
* Health – households living more than 5km away from a health facility and there are no mobile health facilities. Households do not have internal treated water or public pipe stand.
* Living standards – family living in dilapidated or deteriorating living quarters, have more than two members sharing one room, no flush toilets, no rubbish collection, no private or public transport and no fixed or mobile phone line.
* Income – the average household income is less than the poverty line income (PLI) of RM800.
The index, Jayasooria (pic) said, would be used to decide who qualified for government aid.
He said these indicators would leave out many households, such as the urban poor who would not be considered vulnerable, since they live in dingy low-cost flats but have running water, electricity, flush toilets and all their children go to school.
“Or it would miss single mother households or low-income, single breadwinner households who have to take care of a member who is infirm,” said Jayasooria.
“At this stage of our development, almost 95% of our kids go to school.
"But it’s not the attendance that matters but their grades in school. This determines the jobs they can get.”
Also, almost everyone who lives in a low-cost flat is connected to the electricity grid and has treated water but their buildings’ lifts may be broken down or the roofs may leak when it rains.
So a child who gets low grades because he can’t study in his cramped low-cost flat can only get a low-wage job when he leaves school, thus continuing his parent’s cycle of poverty.
Another problematic indicator was the use of the PLI when a more appropriate measure would be whether a household made less than RM2,500, Jayasooria said.
This is since RM2,500 is already the average household income of the B40. Those falling below the average should qualify for help to raise their incomes so that the 2020 goal of an average RM5,000 per month could be met.
“The way the index is done is more relevant for capturing rural poverty. We need indicators to more accurately measure deprivation in urban areas and which matches our stage of development.”
- TMI

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