WHICH MALAYSIA ARE YOU LIVING IN…?

The Department of Statistics Malaysia [DOSM] released the Household Income and Expenditure Survey [HIES,2024] on 8^th October 2025.

This is a good time as any for each and every one of us to reflect on which Malaysia we live in.

Identifying the household income group, you belong to may provide some interesting insights into your worldview.

Using the Household Disposable Income data, we can divide our 8.2 million households into four (4) distinct groups.

Table 1: MAIN INCOME CLASS GROUPS

The challenges of the daily struggle for existence varies drastically between the Groups.

The problems faced by GROUP (1) and the lower-half of GROUP(2) are clearly of a different nature to GROUPS (3) and (4).

Using the cut-off RM 7000 per month approximately 60% i.e. 5 million households with a total population of 18 million are struggling to survive with varying degrees of intensity.

A review of income share by Decile Groups provides a more nuanced picture.

The income share of the top D7 to D10 groups is equal to 66.7%. The income share of D1 to D6 is equal to a miserly 33.3 %. There is enough evidence that 60% of our households are facing real challenges.

There is urgent need to recalibrate public policy to meet the needs of the Bottom 60% households.

Drilling down by Income Percentile

An even more revealing picture emerges when we drill down to monthly household gross income by percentile groups.

Table 3: PERCENTILE GROUPS MONTHLY GROSS INCOME

Ø Top 1% households earn 25.8 times more than the Bottom 1%

Ø Top 10% earn 2.4 times the Bottom 50%

Ø Bottom 10% earn 0.4 times the Median of RM 7,017

The realities of affordability for goods and services are vastly different for those in the BOTTOM 1% compared to the TOP 1%. The challenges of upward social mobility for households in the 60^th percentile

and below are self-evident.

Once again please find the placement of your household in any of the tables above.

Are you looking up or are looking down?

Or are you in the middle wanting to move up to the top?

With the exception of  the 1% group, wherever you are comfortably or uncomfortably ensconced,

there will always be someone worse off than you.

So the next time you feel this irresistible urge to whine and whinge,

spare a thought for your fellow citizens who do not have the luxury to indulge in the same.

18 October 2025

Source: https://open.dosm.gov.my/