REMEMBER 1977? Maybe not, because most of the current Malaysian population had not been born yet. Back then, Malaysia’s gross national income (GNI) per person was RM200 a month, and the government established a new poverty line income (PLI) of around RM50 per person.
Since then, Malaysia has prospered and GNI per capita has risen to more than RM3,800 a month while the PLI has increased only incrementally to RM245 (RM980 for a family of four). As the United Nations Special Rapporteur and others have argued recently, an update of the PLI is long overdue.
