Poverty by DUN
Data as of 2024Poverty rates by DUN constituency from 2019 to 2024.
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How is this data produced?
In general, poverty is defined as having household income below a specific benchmark. Accordingly, statistics on poverty in Malaysia are produced and published together with statistics on household income derived from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), which is conducted at least twice within any 5-year period. This dataset presents 2 definitions of poverty:
- Absolute Poverty: A household is considered to be in absolute poverty if their gross monthly household income is below the Poverty Line Income (PLI). This indicates that the household does not earn sufficient income to meet basic needs for a dignified life.
- Relative Poverty: A household is considered to be in relative poverty if their gross monthly household income is below half the national median income. This measure is used to assess relative deprivation within the district, especially as absolute and hardcore poverty rates approach 0, as is the case for Malaysia.
For full details on the methodology, especially the computation of the PLI and its evolution and nuances, please refer to the technical notes.
What caveats I should bear in mind when using this data?
Data on hardcore poverty is not available at DUN constituency level. Furthermore, DUN-level data is only published from 2019 (relative to state-level data which is available from 1970) as prior HIES samples were not sufficient to support DUN-level granularity.
Metadata
Dataset description
Poverty rates by DUN constituency from 2019 to 2024.
Variable definitions
- State
- Parliamentary Constituency
- DUN Constituency
- Date
- Absolute Poverty Rate
Name in Dataset | Variable | Definition |
|---|---|---|
state (Categorical) | State | One of 13 states with a state legislative assembly; the 3 Federal Territories are excluded as they do not have State Legislative Assemblies. |
parlimen (Categorical) | Parliamentary Constituency | One of 207 parliamentary constituencies; the 15 constituencies in Federal Territories are excluded as they are not subdivided into DUNs. |
dun (Categorical) | DUN Constituency | One of 600 DUN constituencies |
date (Date) | Date | The date in YYYY-MM-DD format, with MM-DD set to 01-01 as the data is at annual frequency |
poverty_absolute (Float) | Absolute Poverty Rate | Proportion of households with monthly income below the Poverty Line Income (PLI) |
Last updated:
31 Dec 2025, 12:00
Next update:
N/A
Data source(s)
- Department of Statistics Malaysia
URLs to dataset
License
This data is made open under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). A copy of the license is available Here.
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Data
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Full Dataset (Parquet)
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Code
Connect directly to the data with Python.
# If not already installed, do: pip install pandas fastparquet
import pandas as pd
URL_DATA = 'https://storage.dosm.gov.my/hies/hh_poverty_dun.parquet'
df = pd.read_parquet(URL_DATA)
if 'date' in df.columns: df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'])
print(df)Sample OpenAPI query
The following code is an example of how to make an API query to retrieve the data catalogue mentioned above. You can use different programming languages by switching the code accordingly. For a complete guide on possible query parameters and syntax, please refer to the official Open API Documentation.
import requests
import pprint
url = "https://api.data.gov.my/data-catalogue?id=hh_poverty_dun&limit=3"
response_json = requests.get(url=url).json()
pprint.pprint(response_json)
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