Abstract—The objective of this paper is to analyse the impact
of non farm income on the incidence of poverty in Kedah. The
data used in this study is primary data which is gathered
through a survey carried out among agricultural households in
Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia. A total of 384 agricultural
households participated in this survey. A face to face interview
was carried out with selected respondents between the month of
April and December 2008. To study the effect of non-farm
income to the level of poverty, this study used a FGT index as
proposed by Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (1984). This study finds
that about 32 percent of the household have non farm activities
and non farm income reduce the level, depth and severity of
poverty in Kedah. Non farm income has a greater impact on
reducing the severity as opposed to the level and depth poverty
in Kedah. The study showed non-farm income reduces the
poverty rate of 42.94%, while poverty declined by 51.47% and
the squared poverty gap- which measures the severity of
poverty- fall by 55.72 percent when non farm income are
included in household income. On the other hand the severity
of poverty fall by 23.35 percent when transfer payment are
included in such income. This is true because agricultural
households receive a very large share of their total household
income from non farm income compared to transfer payment.
Index Terms—Kedah, Poverty, Malaysia, non-Farm Income.
Siti Hadijah Che-Mat, Senior Lecturer at Department Of Economic,
Finance and Banking, College Of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia,
06010, Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia; Corresponding emailhadijah@
uum.edu.my.
Nor’ Aznin Abu Bakar, Associate Professor, at Department Of Economic,
Finance and Banking, College Of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia,
06010, Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia.
Ahmad Zafarullah Abdul Jalil, Senior Lecturer, at Department Of
Economic, Finance and Banking, College Of Business, Universiti Utara
Malaysia, 06010, Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia.
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Cite:Siti Hadijah Che-Mat, Nor’ Aznin Abu Bakar, and Ahmad Zafarullah Abdul Jalil, "The Impact of Non-Farm Income on the Incidence of Poverty among Farmers in Kedah, Malaysia," International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance vol.2, no.4, pp. 326-330, 2011.