coefficients hides more than it reveals. In particular, the Gini measures of the distribution of household income overlooks the most important mechanism of reproduction of social inequality in society, i.e., ownership pattern of productive assets such as land and financial assets. Thus, it is not surprising that, when property such as land and houses as well as financial assets are considered into the inequality measure, the story on inequality could be radically different from what we observed from Tables 2 and 3 . This is especially so, for example, during period of rapid increase in prices of houses which make it more difficult for those in the lowand middle-income groups to own their own houses. In the rural sector, the case of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan has also shown that land reform contributed significantly to a low degree of income inequality.
However, data and research on this important determinant of income inequality is still limited in Malaysia. In fact, the few studies in this area were carried out in late 1970s and early 1980s. In my opinion, this unsatisfactory situation needs to be rectified. In the present debate on the various ways of achieving a socially tolerable income distribution, proposition made by James Meade about promoting "a property-owning democracy" is increasingly being considered as the most feasible way to achieve such an objective. According to the argument, if property wealth is broadly distributed, we get a more stable political democracy, and we need less economic redistribution which is getting more difficult with down-sizing of the governments. This proposition is also acceptable to many different ideological groups. Who could be against more universal home-ownership, or a broader distribution of share-holding? Under such circumstances, collection and compilation of statistics on wealth distribution in the country need to be given serious consideration. As was suggested by Mizoguchi (1985), further studies should be made of wealth distribution in Malaysia and other Asian countries.
Another important gap in data and research on determinant of income distribution in Malaysia (as well as other countries in the Southeast Asian region) will be obvious when we try to understand factors contributing to the increase in
