Even as excitement over this year’s Malaysia Day dies down, it is good to look back and reflect on money and lifestyle changes over the decades.
Data on this in the 1960s is scarce, so we are relying on data by British economist Anthony B Atkinson, who estimated that in 1963, Malaysian households earned a monthly income of RM386, which translates to RM4,632 per year.2. Spending It could also be inferred that, as of last year, Malaysians are spending less of the overall percentage of their income compared with 1963 .In the 1960s, Malaysia recorded a Human Development Index of 0.33, which means the country was in a stage of low human development. It isn’t surprising, then, that the poverty rate was around 40% in 1957, rising to about 50% in 1970.
With such high loan interest rates back then, how did our parents and grandparents even afford to buy houses? Loan interest rates rose in 1969 from 9.1% and to as high as an astonishing 12.6% in 1985. Can you imagine paying those kinds of rates on your home loans back in the day?