Is there evidence of polarisation in Malaysia? An application of Wolfson's polarisation index

• Main Author: A. Hakim, Roslan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sekolah Pembangunan Sosial 2002
• Subjects: HC Economic History and Conditions
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/403/1/Roslan_A._Hakim.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/403/

This paper examines income distribution and the question of polarisation in Malaysia. Wolfson (1994, 1997) has shown that inequality measures such as the Gini index are unable to capture changes in the share of income held by the middle-income group. Thus, analysis that examines only the inequality aspect of an income distribution might have missed relevant aspects of how the distribution of income has really changed. Wolfson (1994) suggests that when examining a distribution of income, measures related to polarisation should be included. Therefore, besides investigating the question of how income is distributed, there is a need to investigate the question of polarisation, which is a new aspect that has emerged in the discussion of income inequality in recent literature. This question appears to be an aspect of distributional change that has been neglected in the study of income distribution in Malaysia. Here, the analysis on the question of polarisation is done by employing polarisation index that has been proposed by Wolfson (1994). The data used in this study is the Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS) data.