Poverty and deprivation: using geographic information system in evaluating the accessibility of households to food retailers in Penang state, Malaysia.

Abstract

Poverty eradication programs that have been devised since 1970s in Malaysia manage to reduce the percentage of poor population from 52.4% in 1970 to 12.4% in 1992 and further reduced to 3.8% in 2009. Although the number of poor population in rural or urban areas was reduced significantly, relative and urban poverty seems to be worsening, since the cost of living within urban areas is much higher than that in rural area. The government targets to reduce poverty, but many poverty alleviation programs focus on employment creation and improvement of infrastructural facilities. Furthermore, poverty eradication programs that focused on providing basic needs such as food, clothing, housing, healthcare and education failed to recognize other form of deprivation such as the accessibility of poor household to healthy and affordable food items as also an important issue. For example, hypermarkets which sold wider ranges of food items at cheaper prices tend to be located at the urban areas which are difficult to be accessed by the poor. This study mapped the location of food retailers in Penang States and identified deprived areas in term of access to healthy and affordable food retailers using Geographic Information System (GIS). Although food retailers tend to cluster with urban centers, most of the people lived within a reasonable distance from food retailers. The approach used in this study could potentially be used in finding suitable location for „Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia’, which provides various products at cheaper prices in close proximity to the intended households particularly the low income.