Household wealth in Malaysia: composition and inequality among ethnic groups.

Abstract

The paper studies composition and inequality of wealth among the household per capita in Malaysia, using the 2007 Malaysias household income survey (HIS) focusing on the disparity among the ethnic groups. Real estate assets make up about 96% of wealth, while financial assets make up the rest. Consistent with findings with other countries, the distribution of wealth are more skewed than of income. The distribution of wealth show that the top 10% of Malaysian household per capita control 35% of the country wealth, while the bottom 405 own 8% the decomposition of wealth shows that the gini coefficient for saving is 0.98, while the fugure for investment asset and real estet assets are 0.90 nd 0.52 respectivetly. Intra-ethnic,it is the Indian that has the leastof ownership in wealth at 23.7% and within the bumiputra group, the figure are 14.7% and the Chinese 10.5%.