Chris Desmond

Nadejda Marques

Sudhir Anand

Habtamu Fuje

Case studies from Rwanda and Angola show how the cost of inaction can be greater than the cost of action. Failure to reduce extreme poverty, for example, often results in malnutrition, preventable morbidity, premature death, and incomplete basic education. Differences between the COI approach and traditional benefit-cost analysis are highlighted.

Case Studies from Rwanda and Angola

The Cost of Inaction

This report gives a perspective on Malaysia, by tracing the development and importance of ethnic pluralism in the country. This pluralism has led the government to show special concern for racial income, distribution and, more generally, for racial economic disparities. The income distribution data used in this study were collected through the Post-Enumeration Survey (PES) of 1970. A comparison shows that the PES is the best source of income data to date on household and individual incomes in Malaysia. The broad features of the PES household income distribution show overall inequality in Malaysia to be fairly high. The individual income distributions show large inequalities within the racial groups. These suggest that racial income disparities may be only part of a much wider problem of income inequality in the country. A profile of poverty in Malaysia is constructed, which identifies the poor in terms of socioeconomic variables such as race, location, employment status, occupation, and education. Such information is useful not only in understanding better the correlates and circumstances of poverty, but also in identifying areas of government intervention for the redress of poverty. The reports concludes if there are no data on the distribution of physical wealth among individuals in Malaysia, the breakdown of the personal income distribution by employment status does shed some light on the distribution of capital assets.

Sudhir Anand

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