The determinants of urban household poverty in Malaysia

Abstract

Since independence in 1950s Malaysia has been recognised as one of the more successful countries in fighting poverty: head count ratio came down to 5.7 percent by 2004. However the recent process of rapid urbanization has led to an increase of urban poverty aggravated further by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. It is important to understand the nature and scale of urbanization, the various driving forces that affect it and the determinants of urban poverty as linked to this process. Our paper identifies the determinants of urban poverty in Malaysia using a logistic regression. Multiple regression model which used to be the main tool of analysis in this kind of studies has been criticised for a number of drawbacks and binary probit or