Not all Malaysians enjoy higher living standards, suffer rising cost of living

PETALING JAYA: Higher living standards does not mean that there is no rising cost of living as both the concepts can co-exist.
However, the question is on the quality of the living standard and which group is enjoying the higher living standard, economists said.
"High cost of living and high standard of living are not conflicting concepts neither are they mutually exclusive. They can co-exist.
"However, it is superficial to say that Malaysians are enjoying a higher living standard because when you talk about standard of living you must talk about the quality of living," independent economist Dr Hoo Ke Ping told theSun today.
He said there are basically six indicators that show the quality and cost of living — education, housing, medical, transportation, food and beverage as well as clothing.
"The items that have gone up in cost are food and fuel. Food is the biggest item affected the mass population.
"After the imposition of the Goods and Services Tax, food prices have increased and never reduced. Likewise the price of fuel, which has increased recently," he said.
Other than this, Hoo said Malaysians generally do a good living standard.
"We don't see squatters around the KL city, we have good basic transportation like the LRT and MRT, we have free early education and affordable public medical care.
"People have the choice to choose between living a simple life or a luxury life.
"If people want to have branded items for clothes and prefer luxury cars instead of local cars then they would complain of high prices and rising costs," he said.
Sunway University's Business School Economics Professor Dr Yeah Kim Leng said the growth of spending is growing in a faster pace than the growth of income.
"Having a strong pace of consumer spending and consumption is certainly good for sustaining economic growth. It would mean that there is a high consumer confidence in spending.
"But that does not mean that people are better off, because we need to see which group is spending and whether the spending is credit driven or based on rising income," he said.
Yeah said as long as the income gap between the rich and poor remains big, the lower income groups will not enjoy quality living standards.
The Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) recently said that Malaysians are now enjoying a much higher standard of living than before citing data of higher foreign car sales, increased mobile phones sales, credit card usage overseas and higher preference of eating out.