Since mid-1980s, however, vigorous structural adjustment measures, including downsizing of the public sector, were put in place to reorientate the economy back to the path of sustainable growth with price stability. These moves were accompanied by various supportive economic policies as part of the broader processes of deregulation and liberalization which were already under way. Although the implementation of these policies were first justified as a response to severe economic problems (including the fiscal and external debt problems), the successful economic recovery since 1987 has encouraged the Malaysian government to continue and consolidate these policies. Hence, with the announcement of the Second Outline Perspective Plan (1991-2000) and Vision 2020, these policy changes were reiterated and reconfirmed.
Nonetheless, the Malaysian Government still maintain that one of the challenges to be overcome as Malaysia strives to become a fully developed industrialized society by the year 2020 is to ensure the establishment of an economically just society, i.e. a society in which there is a fair distribution of the country's wealth and a full partnership in economic progress. It has been stressed in the Vision 2020 document that all Malaysians, whether they live in the rural or the urban areas, must be moved out of absolute poverty. At the same time, it was emphasized that a developed Malaysia "must have a wide and vigorous middle class and must provide full opportunities for those in the bottom third to climb their way out of the pit of relative poverty." (Mahathir Mohamed, 1991). Thus, the National Development Policy (1991-2000), which replaces the NEP, continues to place more emphasis on efforts to eradicate absolute poverty and reduce income inequalities to enable the rising standards of living to be shared more widely among all ethnic groups in both the rural and urban areas. However, instead of the broad-based approach in implementing its policies for poverty eradication, the government efforts during the OPP2 has been concentrated more on the hardcore poor irrespective of ethnicity by raising their income levels and improving their access to basic social services (the hardcore poor is defined as those households receiving less than half of the poverty line income). The socio-economic conditions of the remaining poor households are expected to
