Child deprivation in Malaysia.: Final report for UNICEF.

摘要: The literature on poverty and inequality in Malaysia has for a long time focused on themes such as inequalities between ethnic groups, and urban–rural or regional differences in income and poverty (Hashim, 1998; UNDP, 2013; UNDP Malaysia, 2007; World Bank, 2014). More recently, other issues have also come to the fore, including poverty among Indigenous groups, poverty as a gender issue, educational disadvantage and poverty, and ‘pockets of poverty’(UNDP, 2013; World Bank, 2014). Also prominent in the literature are analyses of the effectiveness of policy in reducing poverty in Malaysia, and future steps in poverty monitoring, as Malaysia heads towards ‘developed nation’status (UNDP Malaysia, 2007). All of these issues are relevant to childhood poverty, but childhood poverty itself has been little studied.The purpose of this chapter is to review some of the major issues with respect to poverty in Malaysia discussed in the literature. This will allow the analytical chapters in this report to build on existing work, and advance knowledge on childhood poverty in Malaysia. The chapter is organised as follows. Three recent studies on poverty in Malaysia are discussed in Section 2.2. Section 2.3 then goes on to discuss urban–rural differences in poverty, while Section 2.4 considers poverty and ethnicity. Literature on poverty and gender is examined in Section 2.5, while poverty and household size is discussed in Section 2.6. Section 2.7 reviews some of the challenges identified in the literature with respect to poverty reduction in Malaysia, and Section 2.8 concludes.