labour force, employment and unemployment. Characteristics of the labour force are limited to age, sex, ethnicity, eductional level, strata (urban or rural), industry and occupation As the future trend of income inequality in Malaysia will depend on how the educational system, training in new technologies, and the interface between labour and firms adapting to new circumstances of globalizing economy, relevant variables to be captured by the income and labour force surveys need to be reviewed and a more detailed information collected. For example, details on literacy rate and highest level of education achieved by household members are presently collected by the HIS and LFS. But, for the purpose of assessing the impact of the working of the labour market or the education and production-related institutions on income disparities, such information has their limit. Hence, for the future surveys, it may be necessary to collect additional information on educational medium (i.e. English or Malay) and stream (i.e between science/technical VS. humanities), skill acquired and the length of training. This may involve adding new items in the questionaries or just merely adjusting the existing questions included in the questionaries. Nonetheless, such changes is deemed necessary as the policy implications from findings based on such information may well be one of considerable importance.
Concluding Remarks
This paper is intended to focus on the extent rapid growth in Malaysia has contributed towards the attainment of human development and also to look into some problems concerning the statistics in making such an assessment. Although human development involves four main components, including sustainability, the paper however has focussed on the equity component of human development.
The long-term consequences of the liberalization measures undertaken in Malaysia since mid-1980s remain to be seen. However, the short-term results on the whole appear to be mixed. The liberalization measures appear not to have victimize and alienate all strata of society. While some sections of the peasantry and urban low-income workers are marginalized from the growth process (and some might even suffer impoverishment), the upper classes and the 'silent'
