PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF STATISTICS
IN PURSUIT
SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IN MALAYSIA
by
Ishak Shari
Introduction
Over the past three decades, there is a fundamental shift in development thinking from concern with economic growth towards sustainable human development, which has been defined as the widening of the range of people's choices - for example, their capability to be educated and to acquire skills, to be healthy and to live longer, to be properly housed, or to participate in economic, political and cultural life. In fact, it is increasingly being accepted that development should be people-centred, democratically organised, responsive to the whole environment (not only the ecological and the economic, but also the political, social and cultural) and balanced. With this shift, researchers and policy makers begun to focus on four essential components of this new development paradigm, namely productivity, equity, sustainability and empowerment (Mahbubul Huq, 1995). It regards economic growth as essential, but emphasizes the need to pay attention to its quality and distribution, analyses at length its link with human lives and questions its long-term sustainability. Hence, in assessing the development process in any society, it is vital to measure to what extent the economic growth process has enabled the progress in the attainment of equity, sustainability and empowerment of people.
Equity is a powerful concept that lies at the heart of the human development paradigm. If development is to enlarge people's choices, people must enjoy equitable access to opportunities. One important determinant of equity of access to opportunities is the pattern of income distribution. It is therefore understandable why data about income distribution attract an enduring attention not only
