Food insecurity is a challenge for the B40 group. These families’ children often bear the consequences of inadequate access to nutritious food.
However, it is important to acknowledge that even some children from higher-income families face the same struggles due to lifestyle choices.
A recent Unicef report revealed that 21.9% of Malaysian children under five are stunted. This is similar to the rate in low-income countries and above the world average of 16.8%.
The 2023 report further highlights that 90% of low-income households in KL are forced to make extreme choices, like reducing food intake due to rising food prices, impacting their children’s nutrition.
This lack of sufficient nutritious food intake leads to many other negative health-related indicators in Malaysian children. These issues require serious attention not only for the well-being of the children but also for Malaysia’s future socio-economic development due to its negative implications on labour productivity.
Paradoxically, these gloomy social indicators are looming amid somewhat improving household economic indicators – stemming from continuously favourable economic growth. Malaysia’s monthly household median income almost doubled in a decade, reaching RM6,338 in 2022. The Gini coefficient is improving over time.
Above all, Malaysia is on the verge of realising the vision set more than three decades ago to become a high-income nation.
Malaysia’s socio-economic development has been rather remarkable. The standard of living has improved tremendously, with an urbanisation rate of almost 80%.
Extreme income poverty is nearly non-existent. However, this progress hasn’t been equal for all Malaysians. The challenge is in ensuring equitable distribution of these gains. Child food poverty, particularly prevalent among low-income groups, is a prime example.
This issue of inequitable distribution of wealth needs to be resolved through the perspective of social security. Although macroeconomic policies play a significant role in fostering economic growth, on their own, they can’t tackle the issue of wealth inequality.
As the saying goes, “you cannot see the forest for the trees”. Experiences of many countries show that a direct approach through social transfers is more effective in addressing child food poverty, particularly through in-kind transfers.
For instance, the free food programme for school children can cover a wider target group. All children without exception will have access to nutritious foods. At the same time, this programme would also be able to reduce food expenditure, especially for low-income families.
Currently, Malaysian households spend a substantial proportion of their income on food and beverage away from home, as captured in the restaurants and accommodation services expenditures in the Department of Statistics Malaysia’s Household Expenditure Survey, 2022.
Ironically, all five quintiles of households, including the bottom two lowest-income quintiles, spent about 10-12% of their income on this expenditure category. This pattern hinted that spending on food and beverages away from home is not necessarily about a lifestyle for the rich. Understanding why B40 households continue to spend on food away from home despite potential cost savings through home-cooked meals is important.
Rechannelling social assistance from blanket subsidies towards a more categorical target, like providing free nutritious food for children, gives a better return to society. Blanket subsidies, like fuel subsidies, often have unintended receivers; they benefit wealthier households who consume more.
Although some subsidies, to a certain extent, can improve households’ disposable income, they prove to be less effective in tackling the specific challenge of improving childhood malnutrition.
A universal free nutritious food programme for school children is certainly more effective. Nevertheless, we can start with an income-targeting programme to address the most vulnerable children.
The household spending pattern that shows the B40 households spent quite a substantial percentage of their income on food away from home should be analysed simultaneously with child food poverty.
It is common for Malaysian children to bring pocket money to buy food in school. This spending is part of food away from home in household expenditures. Financially poor households are prone to a trade-off between quantity and quality of food for their children. At the same time, there is no guarantee that children of higher-income households will consume more nutritious food in school. This situation has exacerbated the child food poverty issue.
The free school nutritious food programme is an effective social security instrument. This social transfer has a direct impact on improving children’s food intake. The programme can also directly increase household disposable income, particularly for lower-income group, through a reduction in household spending on food away from home.
The programme could also be embedded with additional objectives of health consciousness among the public, such as food and nutrition literacy and the health and financial benefits of consuming home-cooked food.
DR ZULKIPLY OMAR
Senior research fellow
Social Wellbeing Research Centre (SWRC)Universiti Malaya
