Opinion: Does 'invisible poverty' lead to social problems?
New Straits Times (Columns)
06 Nov 2006
Shamsul Armi Baharuddin

A NEW form of poverty afflicting Malaysia may be behind the rise in snatch thefts and other crimes. SHAMSUL AMRI BAHARUDDIN urges the authorities to find short- and long-term solutions for it.

Malaysia used to have a high incidence of poverty, around 50 per cent, in 1970. Now, after some 35 years, it has been reduced to below 10 per cent. It is a remarkable achievement by any standard. However, we still have around five per cent of "hardcore" poverty to deal with.

Poverty used to be measured in "absolute" and "relative" terms. We use the poverty line index, based on a pre-determined income figure, as an absolute measure of poverty. Relative poverty is measured in terms of "basic needs", namely whether one or a household has enough "food, shelter and clothing". Debates on the methodology used to measure absolute and relative poverty remain current, especially on how to refine and provide the most reliable figures and measurements.

The incidence of poverty has always been high in the rural areas, especially among Malays and other Bumiputeras. However, urban poverty, across all ethnic groups, remains a problem.

Many are of the opinion that urban poverty has indeed increased, especially, in the Klang Valley, as a result of the increased cost of living and the difficulties of the low-income group to obtain stable employment.

In general, therefore, when we talk about poverty, our focus is on the lower-income group walking a tightrope between being miskin (poor) and sederhana (moderate). Every one of them dreams of being senang (comfortable) and, eventually, if luck is on their side, to become kaya (rich) and luckier still, to enjoy the status of kaya raya (super rich). This is how poverty, and not being poor, has been idiomised by its social actors.

In the rural areas, poverty, in the popular imagination and often depicted in movies, novels and short stories, is articulated in poor living conditions, such as rundown houses, not having enough food to eat, not enough money to send children to school, little choice of clothes and not being able to afford a consumer item at home.

Prof Ungku Aziz, in the 1950s, made popular his measurement of rural poverty, called the sarong index, in which a poor individual can only afford to have one sarong to be used for all occasions. The better-off would have many more sarongs for different occasions. The more or less number of sarong one has determines, in relative terms, whether one is miskin, senang or kaya.

Perhaps today, in any urban area, we can use the kenderaan (vehicle) index to measure a household’s socio-economic position. The miskin one may only have a motorcycle, the senang a car and the kaya a few cars crowding the front porch. Of course, this is a subjective — indeed visual, hence, impressionistic — way of determining the state of one’s socio-economic position. This visible method may not be reliable enough to please economists. Perhaps it would be laughed at by the experts in our Economic Planning Unit (EPU), who are responsible for drawing up our five-year development plans, the latest being the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010).

As such, if we were to suggest a widespread occurrence of "invisible poverty" in this country, we would be ridiculed. But this is a sociological pheno- menon that does exist if we look closer and examine the impact of consumerism that came with the onset of globalisation on the lives of the lower- and middle-income group, not only in Malaysia but elsewhere around the world, including in developed countries.

Research in some cities in Europe and Australia on the impact of consumerism and consumerist lifestyles on the wider society use "size of disposal income" (expanding or shrinking) as a measure of one’s socio-economic position and existence.

These studies show that even though a household or an individual has sufficient food to eat, a comfortable home and enough clothes to wear, the size of their disposal incomes has shrunk as a result of buying consumer items (car, TV, stereo set, computer, mobile phone and branded apparel) on hire-purchase. Each of these items has to be paid for, in weekly or monthly instalments.

Indeed, in extreme cases, the disposable income has been committed to paying off the debts for the consumer items. Whatever is left has been used to buy lottery tickets, such as Tattslotto, in the hope that all their economic woes will be resolved and disappear. But, this would never happen and their misery deepens. Of course, legally they are not classified as bankrupt but, for all intents and purposes, they are.

This is the nature of the new form of poverty in increasingly affluent societies, Malaysia included, that at the moment can only be labelled, for want of a better term, as "invisible poverty".

If we were to conduct studies similar to those done in the above-mentioned countries, it would not be surprising that a similar trend would be found in Malaysia. We often wonder how Ah Longs (illegal moneylenders), as reported in the mass media, could have such a grip on the lives of so many of our lower-income group, even to the extent of holding their ATM cards and dictating how much cash is to be given to each borrower as monthly expenses.

It is too easy to dismiss the problem of "invisible poverty" as the problem of the individual. We can blame each of them for being greedy, spendthrift and too consumerist. But if we pause for a moment and think what they would do or are willing to do to get out of that vicious circle of "invisible poverty", perhaps we wouldn’t take this phenomenon lightly.

Could this be the root of some of our social problems, such as the rise of crime, the increased incidence of snatch theft, the popularity of GROs as alternative employment for women, quick-buck drug trafficking and pyramid schemes?

We are as yet to establish the connection between "invisible poverty" and these social problems. However, who should be responsible for finding this out? We don’t expect the EPU to do this job, perhaps NGOs, the police or government departments.

"Invisible poverty" is here to stay. We need quick short-term visible solutions as well as long-term ones to solve it.