According to the Statistics Department of Malaysia the number of poor households has increased to 639,800 in 2020 from 405,400 households in 2019 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic with many households from a higher income group shifting to a lower one.

In 2020, there was an additional 12.5 percent of households with an income of less than RM2,500 while 20 percent of households from the M40 group with income between RM4,850 and RM10,959 have moved to the B40 group.

Households in the T20 group are also affected by the Covid-19 pandemic where 12.8 percent of this group have shifted to the M40 group. The percentage decrease in income for B40 and M40 households was larger than that for T20 households.

The income distribution for B40 and M40 declined to 15.9 percent from 16 percent in 2019 and 36.9 percent from 37.2 percent in 2019 respectively.

These statistics have been released as part of the department’s Household Income Estimates and Incidence of Poverty Report in 2020 and the study showed that the incidence of absolute poverty increased from 5.6 percent in 2019 to 8.4 percent last year.

In the same study it was disclosed that the incidence of hardcore poverty has increased from 0.4 percent in 2019 to 1 percent or 78,000 households from 27,200 households in 2019.

Sabah recorded the highest percentage of absolute poverty at 25.3 percent from 19.5 percent in 2019. Other states with significant increase in poverty are Kelantan (12.4 percent in 2019 to 21.2 percent in 2020) and Terengganu (6.1 percent in 2019 to 12 percent in 2020).

-THE MALAYSIA VOICE