(Singapore) Malay middle class, not the poor, must buck up

Malay middle class, not the poor, must buck up

30 April, 2008

YAYASAN Mendaki, the self-help group for the Malay/Muslim community, recently conducted a seminar on ways to curb the growing income gap between the Malays and the other races.

According to news reports, the participants lamented over how the Malays are not taking advantage of retraining and upgrading programmes by Mendaki and other bodies which target mostly the lower income groups and the lesser-skilled.

But is the growing income gap between races explained by the lower income group - The statistics question current wisdom.

The income gap between races is widening at a much faster rate for average income than for median income whether by households or by individuals.

The latest Population Census of 2000 data confirms this.

The proportion of Malay households earning less than S$1,000 per month has declined by 4.7 percentage points from 1990 to 2000. This is greater than the national drop of 3.4 percentage points.

But the rise in proportion of Malay households in the higher income brackets, that is, those earning S$4,000 or more monthly, lags behind the national rise (16.6 percentage points versus 21.7). This disparity in upward mobility across races gets even wider as one goes up the income ladder.

The implication is clear: Poor Malays are closing the gap but the middle- and the upper-income Malays are not competitive and mobile enough to close the gap with the other races.

This, of course, does not mean we should now provide financial subsidies for the middle- and upper-class to get richer.

What it does mean, however, is that while we should still be helping the poor, the Malay community should stop identifying poor Malays as the source of the ethnic income gap and blaming them for not upgrading themselves.

Middle-class guilt and comfort have convinced the more educated Malays that the poor Malays should be the target group.

In fact, what is contributing to the income gap among the races is the lack of upward mobility among the comfortable and complacent Malay middle-class.

Future discussions should highlight this fact.

The middle-class should explore ways to help lift themselves and the community. For example, although more Malays are receiving a university education, disproportionately fewer are in growth areas of the economy such as life sciences research and finance.

For a start, we should motivate the Malay middle-class to upgrade themselves and explore new and exciting growth areas.

Farhan Ali