Research: Low social mobility among poor Indians

A report by Khazanah Research Institute has found that a disproportionately high number of Indian children will not make it to university if their parents had no formal education.

According to the institute's 'Climbing the Ladder: Socio-economic Mobility in Malaysia' report, only five percent of Indian children will reach tertiary education level if their parents had no formal education.

This is in contrast to the bumiputera and Chinese communities, where 33 percent and 44 percent of their children respectively will still make it to tertiary education even though their parents had no formal education.

If bumiputera and Chinese parents have only primary education, 38 percent and 37 percent of their children respectively will still make it to university.

Only 13 percent of Indian children born to parents with primary education will make it to university.

If the education of the parents reached secondary level, 56 percent of bumiputera and 65 percent of Chinese and 45 percent of Indian children will have tertiary education.

Almost all children of parents who went to university, regardless of ethnicity, will go to university themselves.

The bumiputera community recorded a 92 percent rate followed by 93 percent and 96 percent for the Chinese and Indian communities respectively.

The study was based on 4,999 parent-child pairs, with the parent born between 1945 and 1960 and the first-born child between 1975 to 1990.

19pct get high skilled jobs

A similar trend is seen in terms of inter-generational occupational mobility.

Twenty-five percent of children born to bumiputera parents with low-skilled jobs would be able to rise and become high-skilled workers.

The rate goes up to 31 percent for bumiputera parents in mid-skilled occupation and 60 percent for bumiputera parents with high-skilled jobs.

Thirty-nine percent of children born to Chinese parents with low-skilled jobs will be able to become high-skilled workers, followed by 43 percent and 68 percent respectively for children born to Chinese parents with mid-skilled and high-skilled jobs.

As for the Indian community, 19 percent of children born to parents with low-skilled jobs go on to become high-skilled workers.

This rate goes up to 25 percent and 72 percent respectively for children born to Indian parents who have mid-skilled and high-skilled jobs.- Mkini