Ethnic and

Social Stratification

In Peninsular Malaysia
by

Charles Hirschman

Ethnic and

Social Stratification

In Peninsular Malaysia
by

Charles Hirschman

Department of Sociology
Duke University

Monograph Series

The Arnold and Caroline Rose of the American Sociological Association

ASA ROSE MONOGRAPH SERIES

Other publications in this series Deviance, Selves and Others, Michael Schwartz and Sheldon Stryker (1971) Socioeconomic Background and Educational Performance, Robert Mason

Hauser (1972)
Black and White Self-Esteem: The Urban School Child, Morris Rosenberg and Roberta G. Simmons (1972) Looking Ahead: Self-conceptions, Race and Family as Determinants of Adolescent Orientation to Achievement, Cad Gordon (1972) Black Students in Protest: A Study of the Origins of the Black Student Movement,

Anthony M. Orum (1972)

Attitudes and Facilitation in the Attainment of Status, Ruth M. Gasson, Archibald 0. Haller, William H. Sewell (1972) Patterns of Contact with Relatives. Sheila R. Klatzky (1972) Interorganiiational Activation in Urban Communities: Deductions from the Concept of System, Herman Turk (1973) The Study of Political Commitment, John DeLameter (1973) Ambition and Attainment, A Study of Four Samples of American Boys, Alan

C. Kerckhoff (1974)
The Greek Peasant, Scott G. McNall (1974) Patterns of Scientific Research: A Comparative Analysis of Research in Three Scientific Fields, Lowell L. Hargens (1974)
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THE ARNOLD AND CAROLINE ROSE MONOGRAPH SERIES IN SOCIOLOGY

A gift by Arnold and Caroline Rose to the American Sociological Association in 1968 provided for the establishment of the Arnold and Caroline Rose Monograph Series in Sociology. The conveyance provided for the publication of manuscripts in any subject matter field of sociology. The donors intended the series for rather short monographs, contributions that normally are beyond the scope of publication in regular academic journals.
The Series is under the general direction of an editorial board appointed by the Council of the American Sociological Association and responsible to the Publications Committee of the Association. Competition for publication in the Series has been limited by the Association to Members and Student
Members. Arnold Rose was my teacher and my friend. was fully aware, before his untimely death, of his sense that sociology needed a publication outlet of the sort provided by this Series; and was dimly aware of his hope that his and Carolines gift would meet that need. am grateful to the American Sociological Association for providing me the opportunity to help fulfill Arnolds hope. Sheldon Stryker
Editor

Copyright American Sociological Association 1975 Library of Congress Number 75-135-44 International Standard Book Number 0-912764-12-0

American Sociological Association

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in

TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER

IV

PREFACE
This study is an attempt to describe and explain the socioeconomic inequalities among the ethnic communities of Peninsular Malaysia. While there are significant socioeconomic and cultural differences between ethnic communities, there are also many similarities. All the peoples of Malaysia, no matter what their ethnic identity, share the basic needs and desires of mankind. The delights of children, family, friends, and good food find expression in every community. Problems of poverty and economic hardship are the overriding concern of the majority of Malaysians of all communities. It is to be hoped that from a clearer understanding of both the differences and similarities, the problems of inequality both within and between ethnic communities may be solved. A note on terminology is necessary. Peninsular Malaysia is that pan of the nation of Malaysia which is on the mainland of Southeast Asia. It was formerly known as West Malaysia and prior to the formation of Malaysia in 1963, it was known as Malaya. In order to be consistent, will refer to the area as Peninsular Malaysia, even for earlier periods when it was known as British Malaya or the independent Federation of Malaya. The term, Malaysian, refers to all residents of Malaysia, be their ethnic community Malay, Chinese, or Indian.

This monograph is a revision of my Ph.D. dissertation which I completed University of Wisconsin in 1972. The advice and criticism of a number of my teachers and colleagues during my years of study at the Department of Sociology and Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin have contributed immeasurably toward my education and this research. During the analysis of the data and writing of the original dissertation, received valuable advice from Professors Henry Finney, Robert
at the

Hauser, Judah Matras, James Scott, James Sweet, and Hal Winsborough. At Wisconsin, I was supported by a traineeship from the Center for Demography and Ecology and a fellowship from the Population Council. My trip to Malaysia and work there were made possible by a research grant from the Center for
Development of the University of Wisconsin.
am indebted to a number of people who assisted me in carrying out this research, particularly in obtaining access to the data from the 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey. The use of these data, which were collected by the Malaysian Department of Statistics under the auspices of the National Family Planning Board of Malaysia, was kindly given to me by Dr. Arriffin bin Marzuki, former Director of the National Family Planning Board, and Professor James A. Palmore, under whose supervision the survey was conducted, kindly provided the data. Several other Americans and Malaysians were very helpful during my period of work in Malaysia, particularly Mr. Ramesh Chander, Chief Statistician of Malaysia, Dr. Agoes Salim, Professors Milton Bamett, and J. Yuzuru Takeshita.

have rethought, reanalyzed, and revised much of this monograph durino the year and a half that have been in the Department of Sociology at Duke University. have benefited from the advice and comments on this research from my colleagues, Richard Campbell, James House, Alan Kerckhoff, and William Mason. am also indebted to Sharon Poss for her advice and assistance with the computer. have had the help of two very able research assistants, Sharifah Sabariah binte Syed Aiwi in Malaysia and Lanier Rand at Duke. The final typing of the manuscript has been expertly done by Madge E. Lee and Jamilah binte Mohd Ali. My wife, Jo, has been a constant source of advice and encouragement at all stages of the research.
Charles Hirschman Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia December, 1974.

VI

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface
List of Tables
List of Figures

v
vii

Chapter
1. Social Stratification and Ethnic Relations 2. Peninsular Malaysian Society: Data and Description 3. The Process of Structural Assimilation 4. Intergenerational Occupational Mobility: Ethnic Differences 5. The Socioeconomic Life-Cycle Model and Ethnic Stratification 6. The Socioeconomic Life Cycle: The Process of Occupational and Income Attainment

6
15 .37 .49

.62
.77

7. Discussion and Conclusions

Appendix A Appendix B
Appendix C

Problems of Comparability in Measuring Occupational Trends

1957 Malaysian Occupation Classification

84 .89

By One- and Two- Digit Level

Comparable Categories From 1931, 1947, and 1957 Censuses, Based Upon the Ten Major Occupational Categories of the 1957 Census .92
Occupational Composition of Employed Males by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967
Indexes of Dissimilarity Between Occupational Distributions (Without Agriculture) of Employed Males, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967
Six Sequential Models of the Effects of Social Background on Occupational Attainment of Married Men, by Occupation: Peninsular

Appendix D

.94

Appendix E

.97

Appendix F

Malaysia, 1966-1967
vii

.98

Appendix G

Comparison of Variance Explained in Additive Models of Educational, Occupational and Income Attainment of Married Men, and Models with Additional Ethnic Interaction Terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

103 107

References

LIST OF TABLES
Table
2.1 2.2
Ethnic composition of the population: Peninsular Malaysia, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967

Page
9

Percentage of population of Peninsular Malaysia bom in Peninsular Malaysia or Singapore, by ethnic community, 1921, 1931, 1947, 1957
Sex ratio of Chinese and Indian population: Peninsular Malaysia, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1947, 1957 Percentage of the total population and of each ethnic community in urban areas: Peninsular Malaysia, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967

.10
.12

2.3 2.4

.13 16

3.1 3.2

3.3 3.4 3.5

3.6

3.7

Mean years of schooling, by ethnic community, sex, and age group: Peninsular Malaysia, 1957 Ranking of major occupational categories of married men, by mean monthly income and mean years of schooling, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967 Occupational composition of employed males, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967 Age distribution of the Chinese population, by sex: Peninsular Malaysia, 1921, 1931, 1947 Detailed occupational composition of employed Chinese males in agricultural and fishing occupations: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947 Detailed industrial composition of employed males in agricultural and fishing industries, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1947, 1957, 1967 Detailed occupational composition of employed males in professional and technical occupations, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1967
Indexes of dissimilarity between occupational distributions of employed males, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967

19 .22 .24

.25

27

.28

3.8

.31 .35

3.9

Employment

status of employed males, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1967

viii

3.10 Distribution of establishments and paid employees in manufacturing industries, by number of employees: Peninsular Malaysia, 1968
4.1
4.2

.35
.40

4.3
4.4

Occupational composition of married men and their fathers, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967 Comparison of the observed occupational distribution of married men and their expected occupational distribution, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967 Transition percentages, fathers occupation to current occupation of married men: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967
Transition percentages, fathers occupation to current occupation of married men, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

.43

.45

,47

5.1

Socioeconomic characteristics of married men, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

.54

5.2

Effects of social background of married men on the number of years of schooling and the probability of having an English-medium education: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

.60 .64

6.1
6.2

Seven models of the effects of social background of married men on monthly income: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967 Effects of ethnicity of married men on occupational attainment in six sequential and cumulative models of social background variables in eight occupations: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967
Comparison of variance explained in additive models of educational, occupational and income attainment of married men, and models with additional ethnic X fathers occupation interaction terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967 Comparison of variance explained in additive models of occupational and income attainment of married men, and models with additional ethnic X years of schooling interaction terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967
Comparison of the occupational composition of employed males, age ten and above, and of employed males, age 15 to 64, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

.68

6.3

.73

6.4

.75

A.

.86 .94

D.I Occupational composition of employed males, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967 E. Indexes of dissimilarity between occupational distributions (without agriculture) of employed males, by ethnic community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967 F. Six sequential models of the effects of social background on occupational attainment of married men, by occupation: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967
ix

.97

.99

Comparison of variance explained in additive models of educational, occupational and income attainment of married men, and models with additional ethnic X birthplace interaction terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967 G.I Comparison of variance explained in additive models of occupational and income attainment of married men and models with additional ethnic X English education interaction terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

G.

103

104

G.3 Comparison of the variance explained in additive models of occupational and income attainment of married men and models with additional ethnic X current residence interaction terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

105

G.4 Comparison of variance explained in an additive model of income attainment of married men and models with additional ethnic X sales occupation and ethnic X agricultural occupation interaction terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

106

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
5.1 5.2
The basic model of the socioeconomic life-cycle
Socioeconomic life cycle model of the process of stratification: Peninsular Malaysia

Page
.50
.53

CHAPTER

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND ETHNIC RELATIONS

This study draws its intellectual heritage from two of the oldest areas of sociological inquiry, social stratification and race and ethnic relations. From the field of social stratification arises the central concern with the distribution of inequality in the population; the concepts and techniques developed over the past decade have guided much of the empirical analysis. From the field of race and ethnic relations arises the question of the factors accounting for the inequality between groups. The blending of these two perspectives has been a stimulus to some of the most significant work in contemporary sociology-

Theoretical Issues There is no shortage of ideas regarding race and ethnic relations in sociological literature. Since the birth of modem sociology with the Chicago school and the writings of Robert Park (1950), the theme of racial and ethnic inequality and associated topics has been dominant in theory and research. The editor of a collection of articles on intergroup relations chosen from the issues of the American Sociological Review, (van den Berghe, 1972), counted 230 relevant pieces published between 1936 and 1969. Although most of the work on race and ethnic relations has been focused entirely on the United States and has been social-psychologically oriented, a comparative macrosociological tradition of theory and research does exist.

Robert Parks theory of the race relations cycle has been the landmark
statement until quite recently. Park expressed his ideas most succinctly in an article first published in 1926 (Park, 1950: 150):

In the relations of races there is a cycle of events which tends everywhere to repeat itself. The race relations cycle which takes the

form, to state it abstractly, of contacts, competition, accommodation, and eventual assimilation, is apparently progressive and irreversible. Customs regulations, immigration restrictions and racial barriers may slacken the tempo of the movement; may perhaps halt it altogether for a time; but cannot change its direction; cannot, at any rate, reverse it.

In spite of his prolific writings Park never produced a complete and systematic exposition of his theory of race relations. The definitive work on race relations theory in his tradition was written by E. Franklin Frazier, whom Everett C. Hughes has called Parks most complete student (G. Franklin Edwards, 1968:xvi). Fraziers Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World was published in 1957, but its theoretical roots seem to extend back two decades earlier. Frazier extended and elaborated Parks ideas with a systematic consideration of the variation in racial encounters and relations, and how they are affected by ecological, economic, and political factors. But at the heart of Fraziers theory is Parks race relations cycle. Perhaps the process of eventual assimilation is retarded by European imperialism and racist doctrine, but eventually the association of race and culture with superiority and inferiority will disappear (Frazier, 1957: 338).
The criticisms of the theory of the race relations cycle have been amply documented in recent years (Berry, 1965; Lyman, 1968; Barth and Noel, 1972). Basically it is a grand theory which does not lend itself to generating testable hypotheses. Since there are no time limits to the various stages of the cycle, it is impossible to refute the theory. Also it is not exactly clear what societal forces during the process of social change or modernization will contribute in what degree to the progress of the cycle. Much of the discussion of the Park-Frazier theory suggests that the processes of urbanization and industrialization will increase interracial and interethnic contact. While these processes may lead to conflict and ethnic-racial stratification in the short run, the eventual process will be assimilation. It is interesting that another student of Park, Herbert Blumer (1965), strongly challenged the idea that industrialization will lead to a reduction of racial and ethnic divisions.

However, the contribution of the Park-Frazier theory cannot be underestimated. They offered a dependent variable-interracial and interethnic inequality-which has been the focus of most recent empirical research. They also emphasized the importance of considering societies as units of analysis, doing cross-cultural research, and taking account of historical forces. In fact, most of the significant theoretical work of the past twenty-five years (Cox, 1948; Lieberson, 1961; Shibutani and Kwan, 1965; van den Berghe, 1967; Schermerhom, 1970; and Barth and Noel, 1972) draws heavily upon the groundwork done by Park and Frazier. All these more recent theoretical perspectives posit new typologies of racial-ethnic outcomes, or a new emphasis on certain societal factors as the most important determinants in the
process. Modem sociological theory in the field of race and ethnic relations is much more sensitive to the question whether assimilation is a very likely outcome in multiracial societies or even a socially desirable goal (see Metzger, 1971 on ideological influences in American race relations theory). A significant development is the recognition of assimilation as a multidimensional concept

(Gordon, 1964). For instance, there could be changes in the assimilation process toward increasing cultural homogeneity yet little interethnic interaction in primary groups.

To achieve a true sociological theory explaining the determinants and the patterns of the evolution of multiracial or multiethnic societies will necessitate both historical and comparative research, a task which staggers the imagination. The process of change is sometimes only incremental over generations, presenting a problem which is not readily encompassed by the standard techniques of data collection. Additionally, the interaction of political, economic, cultural, and familial institutions in the process of change in interracial or interethnic relations almost requires a general theory for the understanding of the interaction of subpopulations within society-a theory which is still far from being formulated. Perhaps the wisest course is to pursue an inductive strategy, analyzing the more limited questions or hypotheses with data that are available.
The Study of Ethnic Stratification Two questions which may invite systematic investigation of issues relevant to a more general theory are: (1) What was the social process which led to the introduction of socioeconomic differences among racial and ethnic communities soon after encounter? (2) What are the social mechanisms which allow socioeconomic differences to be maintained over time, or alternatively, what are the social changes which led to a reduction or elimination of such differences over time? This first question, regarding the origins of ethnic stratification, has not been a focal issue in the literature, though there have been some attempts to deal with it. Shibutani and Kwan (1965:147) state that "the group whose culture is best suited for the exploitation of the resources of a given environment tends to become dominant". Later (1965:174), they refer more closely to occupational or economic differences in stating "the niche that each ethnic group wins in the new web of life depends largely on the competitive advantages provided by its culture and leadership". Noel (1968) has attempted to develop a general theory of the origin of ethnic stratification based upon the independent variables, ethnocentrism, competition, and differential power, which he then applies to the emergence of slavery in seventeenth-century America. will not examine this first question in any great detail, other than to review the origins of the multiethnic society (chapter 2). The second question regarding the process of change in interethnic inequality is more directly amenable to empirical analysis, at least of periods since modem censuses and surveys have been providing adequate empirical data. From such sources it is possible to analyze the process of change in the distribution of socioeconomic attainment and rewards. While some of the explanation of change or lack of change in such measures of inequality between ethnic groups may lie outside the scope of census or survey data, a number of important conclusions can be reached.

Structural Assimilation The inequality in the distribution of some valued social status between ethnic

groups can be interpreted as a measure of "structural assimilation". Taeuber and Taeuber (1964:375) characterize ethnic assimilation as the process of dispersion of members of each group throughout the social structure. They use such indicators as educational attainment, occupational distribution, income, and residential segregation as measures of participation. Eisenstadts perspective is similar in his study of the assimilation of immigrants to a new country; using his concept of institutional integration and dispersion (1953: 167-168), he examines the "extent to which immigrants were disseminated within the main institutional spheres-family, economic, political, and religious-of the new country". Although it might seem at first glance, to be a simple exercise to chart empirically and interpret the trend of "structural assimilation" in a multiethnic society, the task can become complicated. First of all, the various indicators may not all point in the same direction. There may be trends towards a more equal distribution of education, while residential segregation is increasing. The interpretation of the trends is particularly hazardous, especially if the causal mechanisms are unclear. Yet some of the .most significant work in the study of race and ethnic relations has been from the perspective of investigating "structural assimilation, and with the use of census or national survey data at several points in time (Lieberson, 1963; Taeuber and Taeuber, 1965; Price, 1969; Parley and Hermalin, 1972). Such studies have clearly established the trend of "social facts" of ethnic inequality or segregation. Chapter 3 of this monograph attempts to examine the pattern of structural assimilation in Peninsular Malaysia by examining the pattern of occupational differentials among the three major ethnic groups from 1931 to
1967.

The Model of the Socioeconomic Life-Cycle A second question related to structural assimilation is the explanation of ethnic socioeconomic differences by reference to the pattern of intergenerational social mobility. This line of research follows from the development of models of the process of stratification introduced by Blau and Duncan (1967). The basic form of the model of the socioeconomic life-cycle (Duncan, 1967) measures the impact of fathers socioeconomic status on sons socioeconomic attainment. This relationship can be shown in a standard table of social mobility (Blau and Duncan, 1967:28) or it can be reduced to the correlation coefficient between fathers occupation and sons occupation. However, the real import of the model of the socioeconomic life-cycle is the analysis it allows of the process whereby status of origin influences adult socioeconomic attainment. This is made possible by elaborating the model with the introduction of additional social background variables (fathers education, birthplace, mothers characteristics, etc.), intervening variables (education, social-psychological attributes, etc.), and attainment variables (income, participation, etc.). Most of this work followed from the research of Otis Dudley Duncan and his students, and other sociologists utilizing the basic paradigm (Duncan, Featherman, and Duncan, 1972; Duncan, 1968a; Featherman, 1971a; Featherman, 1971b, Hauser, 1969; Hauser, 1971; Kelley, 1973; Jones, 1971; Sewell and Hauser, 1972). A growing literature has applied this model of the socioeconomic life-cycle

study of ethnic stratification (Duncan and Duncan, 1968; Duncan, 1969; Duncan and Featherman, 1972; and Featherman, 1971c). Basically the model allows one to investigate the net effect of ethnicity as a determinant of ethnic inequality, after controlling for differences in social background characteristo the

tics. Ethnic differentials in achievement, which are independent of differentials in social background, can be accounted for by several alternative explanations. The two major competing explanations are the discrimination hypothesis and the cultural hypothesis (discussed in chapters 5, 6, and 7). Most often, discrimination is thought to occur in the job market, as when, in choosing between two men of equal educational qualifications, an employer bases his decision upon ethnicity, and presumably, chooses a member of his own com-

munity. The other explanation, one very common in certain sociological circles (Rosen, 1959), is that of differential motivation or different cultural goals. Thus the members of a disadvantaged ethnic group are often said to have a lower propensity to achieve because their culture does not inspire them to be ambitious and calculating. How does one distinguish between these two explanations? Ideally, it would be necessary to have independent measures of the psychological orientation toward achivement in each ethnic group. If the effect of ethnicity upon achievement were completely mediated by this psychological orientation, the cultural explanation would have support. (Analysis of ethnic stratification in the United States did not support this theory; see Featherman, 1971c). Lacking such information, one must make inferences of the basic explanation from other patterns. However, much of the subsequent analysis shows that the net effects of ethnicity in Malaysia are relatively small as determinants of educational and income attainment, although ethnicity does appear to be an important factor in entry into several occupations. In these occupations, I argue that discrimination by employers is the most plausible explanation. In sum, will examine the magnitude and persistence of ethnic occupational differentials in Peninsular Malaysia and attempt to account for ethnic differentials in terms of differing social backgrounds. If social background does not account for ethnic differentials, I will examine the alternative explanations of discrimination and cultural propensities to achieve.

CHAPTER 2

PENINSULAR MALAYSIAN SOCIETY: DATA AND DESCRIPTION

The chief ethnic communities of Peninsular Malaysian society are Malays, Chinese, and Indians. These three form a plural society, segmented along cultural as well as structural lines. In this chapter, discuss some major differences among them, and in tandem introduce the sources of data to be used in the subsequent analysis.

Origins of a Multiethnic Society The migration-of the Malay peoples to Malaysia was so long ago that they are generally considered the indigenous population. Probably they first arrived on the peninsula between 2,500 and 1,500 B.C. (Hodder, 1968:22). They displaced an aboriginal population from the seacoasts and plains to the jungle, where scattered communities of aborigines exist to this day. There has been a more recent stream of immigration in the past century of Malay peoples from Java and Sumatra. It is almost impossible to estimate the magnitude of this
The term "plural society" was first used by J.S. Fumival (1948) in his work on the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He was concerned with the segmentation consequent upon the imposition of the colonial economic system upon a traditional society. Gradually the term came to signify any society which had strong social divisions along ethnic, racial, religious, or linguistic lines. Some social scientists have tried to maintain the distinction between social pluralism (involving separate social institutions) and cultural pluralism (van den Berghe, 1967; M.G. Smith, 1960), while others have used the term without making theoretical distinctions (Haug, 1967). Recently the concept has been attacked because of the lack of consistency of interpretation (Cox, 1971; Cross, 1971). The use of the sociological concept, "plural society", is quite different from the political theory of pluralism (see Gillam, 1971).

movement because most of the migrants have become assimilated into the Malay population. But this was a substantial movement that has continued into the present century (Smith, 1952: 15-20; Saw Swee Hock, 1963: 110113).

From the earliest recorded times there has been contact between various ethnic and nationality groups on the Malaysian peninsula. As the extension of mainland Southeast Asia into island Southeast Asia, lying along the main sea route between China and the West, Peninsular Malaysia has been the historical cross-road of Southeast Asia (Lamb, 1964:99). Most of the early contacts arose from trade relationships. Indian traders and Indian civilization left a heavy imprint on Malay culture, a circumstance which during the early centuries of the Christian era brought about what is often referred to as the "Indianization" of Southeast Asia (Lamb, 1964:104). If there were any permanent settlements of Indians on the Malaysian peninsula during this period, they have long since blended with the Malay population.
There was also early contact with China, the first visitors being Buddhist monks, while traders from China are reported to have come to Malaysia in the fourteenth century (Purcell, 1967:16). The coastal city of Malacca, which had already become the center of an important empire about 1400, contained a diverse population of many nationalities, many of whom came to engage in trade and commerce.

Contact with European peoples began with the capture of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511. Then the Dutch captured it in 1641 and ruled it for about 150 years. The activities of early European colonialists were probably not very different from those in other Asian empires which rose and fell in the preceding 1,000 years. They were interested in trade and the control of navigation. Perhaps the most important legacy of this early colonialization is the Portugese Eurasian community. In the 16th and 17th centuries Portuguese soldiers intermarried with local women, and their descendents still live in villages near Malacca (Hodder, 1968:24-25). Most important in the creation of Malaysias present day multiethnic society was the period of British colonial rule. The British first arrived in Penang, an island oflf the West Coast, in 1786. Within 40 years they had gained control of the island of Singapore and the city of Malacca, and by the second decade of the twentieth century the entire peninsula came under direct British rule. The arrival of the British coincided with and perhaps stimulated the migration of Chinese to Malaysia. (They also migrated to other Southeast Asian countries.) Both the Chinese and the British began to exploit local resources, especially tin, and to engage in trade. Among their other economic ventures was the planting of various cash crops such as pepper, spices, sugar cane, and coffee on a commercial basis, first in the Straits Settlements (Penang, Malacca, and Singapore) but soon in nearby areas of the Malaysian peninsula. To obtain sufficient labor for the new agricultural plantations, the colonial government as well as private interests encouraged Indians to immigrate. Although many of the crops as well as tin mining were not new to the Malay population, what was new was their greatly increased scale. This period of colonial economic expansion and international migration

transformed the country. In about 1800 the population was estimated at a quarter of a million, but by the end of the century it reached two million (Hodder, 1968:26). The causes of migration from India and China as well as the terrible working and living conditions to which the early migrants to Malaysia were subjected have been the subject of considerable historical research (Purcell, 1967; Jackson, 1961; Blythe, 1957; Farmer, 1960; Kemial Singh Sandhu, 1969). Immigration increased throughout the 19th century and for the first three decades of the 20th century, until the 1930s, when the Depression and restrictive legislation slowed it. As a point of reference, BIythe (1947:66) names 1850 as the beginning of large-scale immigration of Chinese to the mainland of Malaysia. The major flow of Indian migration began in the 1880s and increased sharply in the second decade of the 20th century when the rubber plantation sector began to expand very rapidly (Kemial Singh Sandhu, 1969:312-313). The impact of international migration on Peninsular Malaysian society may be discovered by examining the changing ethnic composition of the country.
The Data Base A basic of British enterprise was the establishment of a govemmentallysponsored census of the population. The colonial authorities first began to take a census of British Malaya in 1871 and continued every decade with the year ending in "one" until 1931. (Saw Swee Hock, 1968:2-3). Not surprisingly, this date (year ending in "one") was also census year in England. The planned 1941 Census was never taken because the Japanese during World War II controlled most of Southeast Asia, including what is now Peninsular Malaysia. In 1947 after World War II and the resumption of British colonialism, another census was taken. The next one was a decade later, in 1957. The 1957 Census of Population was the last taken during colonial rule. The next and most recent census was that of 1970.
The early censuses of 1871, 1881, 1891, and 1901 did not include all of what became British Malaya or what is now Peninsular Malaysia. British rule spread slowly over the Malayan peninsula (Gullick, 1969:44-52; Cowan, 1961), and these early censuses covered only the states of the country which the British controlled at the time.

Thus the only population censuses for the entire area now known as Peninsular Malaysia are the 1911, 1921, 1931, 1947, and 1957 censuses. Since the 1970 Census data were not yet available at the time of this analysis, made use of two important surveys taken in the late 1960s. One survey is known as Malaysian Socioeconomic Sample Survey of Households 1967-1968 (Choudhry, 1970) which, because it was a survey of households and not of the total population, is not completely comparable with the earlier censuses (Appendix A). However, used the 1967-68 Socioeconomic Survey data to extend the time-series analysis of population trends (see below and chapter 3). The other important source is the 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey (see National Family Planning Board of Malaysia, 1968), a survey of 5,457 married women in the reproductive years. In addition to data on fertility and family planning, which were the primary interest, this survey also gathered information on the social background of the husbands of the women inter-

viewed. (Analysis of the socioeconomic characteristics of these husbands is reported in chapters 4, 5 and 6.) was able to analyze the Family Survey from the original data file which was on a computer tape. The following analysis and that in chapter 3 is based upon published tabulations of the censuses and the 1967-68 Socioeconomic Survey. Ethnic Composition The data from the 191 1, 1921, 1931, 1947, and 1957 censuses and a 1967 estimate (Dept. of Statistics, 1969a), reported in Table 2.1, show the popula-

Table 2.1:

Ethnic Composition of the Population: Peninsular Malaysia, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967

Community Malays Chinese Indians and Pakistanis Others Total

Popula tion in 1housancIs 1947 1931 1911 1921 2428 1370 1864 1569 693 856 1285 1884
239 37 2339 439 43 2907 571 68 3788 531 65 4908

1957 3126 2334 707 112 6279

1967 4389 3257 1004 137 8787

Percentage Distribution
1911 1931 1947 1957 1967 1921 58.6% 54.0% 49.2% 49.5% 49.8% 50.0% 38.4 37.2 37.1 Chinese 29.6 29.4 33.9 11.4 10.2 10.8 11.3 15.1 15.1 Indians and Pakistanis Others 1.6 1.6 1.8 1.3 1.8 1.5 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% Total

Community Malays

Sources: Department of Statistics, 1971b 3. Department of Statistics, 1969a 39.

tion by ethnic community from 1911 to 1967. During this period, the total population grew from 2.3 million to 8.8 million. Of the 8.8 million in 1967, 50 percent were Malays, over one-third were Chinese, and over one-tenth were Indians. The small "others" category of less than two percent includes Ceylonese, Thais, Eurasians, Europeans, and other small ethnic or nationality

groups. The Malay proportion declined from 58.6 percent in 1911 to 49.2 percent in 1931 and has been stable at about 50 percent over the last 40 years or so. The Chinese proportion grew from 29.6 percent in 1911 to 38.4 percent in 1947 and has declined only slightly since then. The Indian population grew by 50 percent from 191 to 1921: their proportion of the total population increased

from 10.2 to 15.1 percent, a figure which held steady until 1931, declined to 10.8 percent in 1947, and has increased only slightly since then. During the period 1931 to 1947, when the Indian proportion declined from 15.1 to 10.8 percent, the absolute number of Indians declined by 40,000 as a result in the Depression of substantial out-migration of both males and females.

From the limited statistical and historical accounts, it seems that immigration has had a significant influence upon ethnic composition since early in the nineteenth century (Jackson, 1961; Kemial Singh Sandhu, 1969). Not until the 1930s did the colonial governments restrictions and the declining demand for labor as a result of the Depression slow down the flow of migration.
The Immigrant Communities Most immigrants (Javanese, Chinese, and Indians) came to Malaysia not as permanent settlers, but only to earn some money and return to their homelands. Farmer (1960:17) estimates the average length of stay to have been two to three years, but over time many immigrants became permanent settlers. What proportion of migrants became permanently settled cannot be estimated, but there are data for several dates in the 20th century on the proportion of locally-bom Chinese and Indians living in Malaysia. Table 2.2 shows the proportion of each ethnic community that was bom
Table 2.2:

Percentage of Population of Peninsular Malaysia Born

in Peninsular Malaysia or Singapore, by Ethnic Community, 1921, 1931, 1947, 1957.

Community Malays
Chinese Indians Total

1921

1931 29.9 21.4 58.9%

20.9 12.1 56.4%

1947 96.0% 63.5 51.6 78.3%

1957 97.4% 75.5 65.0 84.8%

Source: Fell, 1960:15.

in Peninsular Malaysia or Singapore from 1921 to 1957. Since many of those not bom in Peninsular Malaysia have come to be permanent residents, locallybom" is probably a conservative estimate of the number of permanent immigrant settlers. The major increase in the proportion of the locally-bom occurred from 1931 to 1947. A decrease in new migration, a return emigration of the foreign-bom, higher mortality among older persons who are more likely to be foreign-bom, or a change in the age structure as a result increasing fertility could account for the fact that by 1957 over three-fourths of the Chinese population and two-thirds of the Indian population had been bom locally.

In retrospect, several events and issues in Malaysian social history appear important in determining the character of the contemporary multiethnic society. Although the initial British control of the Straits Settlements stimulated the beginnings of modem Chinese and Indian migration to Peninsular Malaysia,
10

the major flow occurred in the latter pan of the 19th century. Between 1874 and 1914 the British consolidated their rule over all the states of Peninsular Malaysia, the effect of which was to assure political and economic stability. Moreover, they created a structure of government-assisted opportunities through which British and also Chinese businessmen could increase their economic exploitation of the country. This, in turn, required more labor and more immigration. In the last years of the 19th century, rubber supplanted all other commercial agricultural crops and became the most important element of the economy. As other economic enterprises lost ground on the world market or required less labor (in the tin industry as a result of technological change) rubber plantations continued to absorb more labor.

Intermarriage In many multi-ethnic societies, such as Hawaii (Schmitt, 1965:465), Mexico, and Brazil (van den Berghe, 1967, chapters 2 and 3), there has been extensive intermarriage and racial amalgamation. But intermarriage, while not unknown in Malaysia, is extremely rare; indeed, a study of Malay marriage and kinship in Singapore reported almost no intermarriages (Djamour, 1957: 11). A subcommunity of Chinese called "Baba Chinese" or "Straits Chinese" has acquired a great deal of Malay culture, including cuisine and dress. They speak Malay as their mother tongue, but keep their Chinese ethnic identity and have not become Muslims. They are reported to be the descendants of early Chinese immigrants who, perhaps before 1850, married local women.
Freedman (1955:376) estimated the Straits Chinese as constituting about 15 percent of the total Chinese population in Peninsular Malaysia. They are predominately located in the old Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca.

Malaysia was generally free of the virulent racism-except among some

European colonialists-that infects some multi-ethnic societies. In former

times Chinese parents sometimes used to sell unwanted female babies to Malay couples. They were raised as Malays and were completely accepted into the Malay community in spite of their physical appearance (Freedman, 1955:398). In fact, any non-Malay who converts to Islam is usually accepted as a member of the Malay community.

A factor which might have led to more intermarriage was the unbalanced sex ratio of the early immigrant communities (Table 2.3). In the early decades of the 20th centuries there were only from 2 to 4 females for every 10 males of the Chinese and Indian population. Of course, there were alternatives to marriage in Malaysia: there was reportedly a great deal of prostitution, especially in the Chinese community (Purcell, 1967, chapter 9). Since most migrants did not plan to stay permanently there was probably minimal motivation to marry and launch upon family life. Moreover, intermarriage was discouraged by the geographical separation of the ethnic groups. Many Chinese and Indians lived in isolated tin-mining communities or on rubber plantations, while the majority of Malays lived in rural villages. Towns and cities were potential sites of interethnic contact, but there most of the inhabitants were non-Malays. The most popular explanation of the infrequency of interethnic marriage is the religious barrier. Practically all Malays are Muslims, and Islam requires the conversion of potential non-Malay mates. In ethnic communities
11

Table 2.3:

Sex Ratio of Chinese and Indian Population: Peninsular Malaysia, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1947, 1967.
Females Per Thousand Males Indian Chinese 320 215 424 371 514 486

Year
1911 1921 1931 1947 1957

1967

815 926 999

687 746 896

Sources: Del Tufo, 1949:57-58. Fell, 1960:9. Choudhry, 1970:15.

with strong national and cultural traditions such as those of the Chinese and Indians, conversion is not common. The span of 100 to 200 years is possibly too short to yield evidence of possible eventual ethnic amalgamation in

Malaysia.
Differences Between Ethnic Communities Perhaps the major process of acculteration in the 20th century has been the creation of a common culture within each of the three primary ethnic communities. The common bond of being Chinese in Malaysia has created a common identity among the diverse linguistic, occupational, and clan groups of Chinese. Similarly, although Tamil-speakers from Ceylon and Indian are well aware of their differences, most other Malaysians regard them both as Indians. The regional differences in the Malay community between the East and West Coast, as well as the differences between indigenous Malays and those who migrated a generation ago from Sumatra or Java are secondary to the more salient differences between the three major ethnic communities. Most Malays are of the Islamic faith, Chinese are predominantly Buddhist, and the majority of Indians are Hindu. There is some religious diversity in the Chinese and Indian communities, both of which have sizeable Christian minorities. There are many Indian Muslims, particularly in the Pakistani community.

Language has been a major barrier. For the most part, each community has kept its mother tongue. This is also true of subcommunities of Chinese and Indians who speak different languages. Among middle-class persons (teachers, professionals, government workers, and the like) in the cities, English is the interethnic medium, while Malay is the basic vehicle of communication among the masses (U.A. Aziz, 1960:27). Most non-Malays, however, have a limited mastery of the Malay language. In 1957, only three percent of the Chinese population above age ten, and only five percent of the same Indian population said they were literate in Malay (Fell, 1960:94-95).
12

But perhaps most significant are socioeconomic divisions that have often been along ethnic lines of which an example is the pattern of urbanization. Living in an urban area permits access to educational and occupational opportunities as well as exposure to modernizing influences (Schnaiberg, 1971). In this the Chinese and Indians have had the advantage over the Malays.
As shown in Table 2.4, the proportion of the population which is urban has
Table 2.4:

Percentage of the Total Population and of Each Ethnic

Community in Urban Areas:* Peninsular Malaysia, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967.

Year
191 1921 1931 1947 1957 1967
Total 10.7% 14.0% 15.1% 18.9% 26.5% 32.3%

Community Chinese Malay

Indian

7.3 11.2 17.6

31.1 44.7 51.8

25.8 30.6 35.1

*An urban area is defined as a gazetted area whose population numbers 10,000 or more.

Sources:
Del Tufo, 1949: 39 and 47. Fell, 1960: 6 and 11. Choudhry, 1970: 68.

greatly accelerated in recent years. The Chinese were the most urban community in 1967 followed by the Indians and the Malays. Yet, although each ethnic community became more urban, ethnic differentials have persisted. The dramatic rise of the proportion of Chinese in urban areas between 1947 and 1957 is usually attributed to the forced relocation of rural squatters ordered by the colonial government during the "Emergency" of the early 1950s (Fell, 1960:7). At that time, over half a million rural settlers, mostly Chinese, were resettled into "new villages", many of which became small towns (Hamzah Sendut, 1962). The Emergency was the popular name of a period of warfare between guerilla forces and the government, which officially lasted from 1948 to 1960, although most of the active fighting had ended by the mid-1950s (Short, 1964).
Almost any measure of socioeconomic status, whether education, occupation, or income reveals significant differences between the ethnic communities of West Malaysia (Aries, 1971). By and large, non-Malays (Chinese and Indians) have attained higher average levels of education and income than Malays. Among Chinese and Indians, also, a higher proportion of their
13

employed population is engaged in managerial, sales, and other occupations of higher status. The majority of Malays remain rural agriculturalists. Much of the analysis in the succeeding chapters is directed toward explaining these patterns. Nonetheless, while there are important differences in the mean values of socioeconomic status between ethnic groups, there is a great deal of overlap in the distributions. Not all Malays are peasants in rural areas, and not all
Chinese are businessmen in the towns and cities.

Just as there are popular stereotypes linking ethnic memberhip with occupation, there are equally misleading stereotypes regarding the ethnic division of power. It is often argued that the Malay community is the dominant political group in Malaysia while the Chinese control the economic sector. During the colonial era, the British were supposedly administering the country for the benefit of the indigenous Malay community. Since Independence, Malays have been over-represented in their proportion: in political and some governmental positions, including the cabinet, the parliament, the military and police, and the basic administrative civil service of the country. Similarly, most shops and businesses in the cities and small towns throughout Malaysia are run by Chinese entrepreneurs. These popular stereotypes, however, have rarely been subjected to empirical analysis. The popular belief that the Chinese community controls the economy is cast into doubt by some recent data published in the Second Malaysia Plan (Malaysia, 1971:40) showing the distribution of share capital in limited companies (corporations) in Peninsular Malaysia by ethnicity and nationality of share holders. Malays and Malay interests owned only 1.5 percent of such shares by value. Indians held less than one percent, and Chinese owned 22.8 percent. But most interesting was the fact that 62 percent of the value of shares were held by foreign interests, either individuals or companies. While limited companies produce only 21 percent of the total GNP of Peninsular Malaysia (Department of Statistics, 1969b:2), they are the most modem sector of the economy, one which will grow as Malaysia becomes more industrialized and economically developed. The Chinese community, or at least some segment of it, has a firm stake there and has an advantage, compared with the other communities. However, the dominant power and perhaps ultimate control of this part of the economy is in non-Malaysian hands of individuals and companies from abroad. This means that this study of social stratification in Malaysia is ignoring a major element of the political economy-the foreign community. While negligible in terms of numbers, their socioeconomic position and influence is probably the highest in the social structure. But since data on the characteristics of foreigners are not available separately, it is not possible to include them in our analysis. In any case, the analysis made here of the distribution of status characteristics, is probably not appropriate to measure the participation and influence of the upper echelons of Peninsular Malaysia society. There has been some preliminary research on this topic (Puthucheary, 1960), but much more is needed for an understanding of these aspects of Malaysian social stratification.

14

CHAPTER 3

THE PROCESS OF STRUCTURAL ASSIMILATION

As here defined, structural assimilation is the process of dispersion throughout the social structure of different ethnic or immigrant communities. While ethnic groups may be initially in various social strata and residential areas, in Parks model the shifting and sorting of people over time comes to depend more on individual characteristics than on ethnicity. The major social institutions that serve as indicators of structural assimilation have been economic, educational, and residential. Thus the investigator looks at trends in the distribution of ethnic groups by occupation, educational attainment, or residence.

(Taeuber and Taeuber 1964; Eisenstadt, 1953; Lieberson, 1963; Parley and Hermalin, 1972). If the distribution of status characteristics becomes more similar or more equal overtime, one may conclude that structural assimilation is occurring.
The major social institutions mentioned above are generally thought of as spheres where secondary relationships predominate. This means that people do not form close personal ties, but generally come together in an office, school, or factory for reasons other than friendship with others in that location. In contrast, in other social structures, such as the family, social clubs, and informal groups, primary group relationships predominate, and in these structural assimilation has been investigated by using such measures as rates of intermarriage and informal association (Heer, 1967; Bumpass, 1970; Molotch, 1969).
National data on structural assimilation in primary group associations, especially of secular trends, are relatively rare; occupation, education, and residence are much more likely to be routinely reported in censuses and surveys. It should also be noted that an equal distribution of ethnic groups
15

in terms of educational attainment or occupation does not necessarily mean that they are engaged in secondary relationships in the same institutions: equal educational attainment may be achieved in separate schools, and an equal occupational distribution could be possible even if the ethnic groups worked in different industries at diverse locations. At best, these measures of structural assimilation give a rough idea of the relative level of interethnic

inequality.
Trends in Educational Attainment In earlier research, examined the differential distribution of ethnic groups by educational attainment in Peninsular Malaysia (Hirschman, 1972b). Data from the 1957 Population Census of the Federation of Malaya were used to measure the trend in educational attainment, age groups being treated as representative of successive cohorts passing through the educational system during the 20th century. The oldest, 60-64 years old, had passed through the educational system from 40 to 50 years before 1957, while most of the youngest, 20-24, had completed their education in the few years preceding 1957, and a few may still be attending institutions of higher learning. Table 3.1 shows the mean years of schooling of nine five-year age groups Table 3.1:

Mean Years of Schooling, by Ethnic Community, Sex, and Age Group: Peninsular Malaysia, 1957 Mean Years of Schooling

Age Group
20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64

Malay 3.9 3.5

3.3 3.0 2.8 2.4 1.9 1.7 1.3

Males Chinese

Indian

Malay
1.5 1.1 0.8

4.7 4.1 4.6 4.5 3.9 3.4 2.9 2.6 2.4

4.7 5.0 4.7 4.0 3.4 3.0 2.7 2.4 2.2

Females Chinese 2.4 1.6

1.7 1.3

Indian

0.5 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1

0.9 0.6 0.4 0.3 0.2

2.1 2.1 1.6 1.0 0.7 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.4

Source: Calculated from tables in Fell, 1960:87-90.

in 1957, by ethnicity and sex. It is clear that there has been a general trend towards higher educational attainment among all Malaysians. However, certain significant ethnic differentials have not declined. In the oldest age group, the mean educational attainment of Malay males was 1.1 years less than that of Chinese males; in the youngest, the Malay-Chinese difference was .8 of a year. From this table education does not seem to indicate a great deal of structural assimilation during the first half of the 20th century.

16

More detailed analysis showed that the ethnic differential persisted because Malays encountered a problem of access to schools. The Malays rates of entry into primary schools and of progression from primary to secondary schooling were lower than were the Chinese and Indians. However, in primary or secondary schools, Malays were just as likely to go on to completion
as were Chinese or Indians. These ethnic differentials in education seem to have resulted from the relative accessibility of schools: Malays were more likely to live in rural areas, but most schools, during the colonial era, were in the towns and cities.

Trends in the Occupational Structure There were major shifts in the occupational structure of Peninsular Malaysia between 1931 and 1967, when the proportion of all adult males employed in agriculture declined from 58 to 43 percent. There have been accompanying increases in the proportion of white-collar workers as well as craftsmen and production process workers (operatives). These changes correspond to wellknown shifts in the occupational structure in the course of economic development (Farrag, 1964; Moore, 1966; Treiman, 1970). Concealed in these broad patterns, however, is considerable ethnic variation. Each ethnic community had its particular occupational structure in 1931, the first year in our analysis. While some patterns of change in occupational distributions were similar in all three, there were differences in rates of change, and occasionally in the direction of change. The patterns of ethnic occupational structure continued to show wide variation in 1967.

As in most other longitudinal research, a satisfactory explanation of the process of change in the occupational structure or structural assimilation is extremely difficult to find. The causes of any social change or lack of change, are intertwined in historical conditions, to measure whose relative impact requires data far beyond the census material used to measure the trends. In the attempt to relate these patterns to the historical circumstances from which they arise shall put forth hypotheses which require more investigation than is possible here, for one of the tasks of the research worker is to ask questions and suggest hypotheses for further investigation.

Data and Methods Data on the occupations of employed males by ethnicity has been assembled from the Population Censuses of Malaya (the eleven states which at present comprise Peninsular Malaysia) of 1931, 1947, 1957, and of 1967/68 from the Socioeconomic Survey of Households. These pose several problems of comparability (see Appendix A). For one thing, the age boundaries of the various tables on occupations varied from none, 10 plus, to 15-64 years. This means that raw numbers in an occupation from one time to another are not comparable
nonetheless, the numbers at either end of the age distributions arc relatively small and seem to have only minor effects on the percentage distributions. Accordingly, occupational trends are measured with data in percentage form. Then the definition of the workforce was based on the "gainful worker" concept in the 1931 and 1947 censuses, but somewhat different variations of the concept of the labor force were used in the 1957 Census and 1967/68 Socioeconomic Survey. This gave rise to the problem that unemployed and perhaps
17

some retired workers are classified as in the occupational distributions (based only on employed population in 1957 and 1967) in the earlier sources and not in the later ones; however, suspect this to exert little influence and since do not try to interpret small differences or changes it should not interfere with the analysis. Perhaps the most important problem lies in the various schemes of occupational classification of the four sources of data. Working with the most detailed categories of each scheme of occupational classification, constructed a roughly comparable series of occupational trends by ethnicity. The list of categories in the comparable classification was limited to the ten major occupations in the most recent (1957 and 1967/68) classification (see Appendix B). While such a short list of occupations lacks much of the flavor and diversity of the detailed tables, it does assure the relative comparability

of a variety of schemes of classification. Occasionally, data on the detailed categories within a major occupational classification are presented to show internal variation.

To indicate trends and differentials, the occupational composition of each ethnic group is presented for each of four periods in percentage form, which allows for a detailed discussion of comparative stability and change in the occupational structure of each community. The ethnic diversity in occupational composition is summarized with "delta" indexes of dissimilarity. A delta index, a measure of the inequality or unevenness of two percentage distributions, can be interpreted as the minimum percent of one population which would have to be redistributed to achieve equal percentage distributions across all categories. (For a more detailed discussion of the delta index and similar measures, see Duncan and Duncan, 1955 and Taeuber and Taeuber, 1965:
195-245).

Occupation and Social Inequality Because occupation is both the main activity of adult men and usually the main determinant of social rewards, including income, the occupational structure is often considered equivalent to the opportunity structure; in other words, entering an occupation usually entails reaching a position in a socioeconomic hierarchy. However, the construction of an occupational hierarchy, a task of ranking essentially nominal categories, has proved troublesome. An occupational hierarchy based on prestige scores, however, is largely consistent across time and space (Hodge, Siegel, and Rossi, 1966; Hodge, Treiman, and Rossi, 1966). In turn, the prestige ranking of an occupational category shows a strong relationship to income and education (Duncan, 1961). Since occupation is to be used to indicate comparative social status or social inequality, the socioeconomic correlates of different occupational positions must be demonstrated. Since did not have access to an independent measure of prestige rankings of occupations in Malaysia, calculated the average income and education in different occupations from the 1966167 West Malaysian
Family Survey data. Education would seem to measure level of skill while income is a major determinant of level of living.
Table 3.2 shows the mean education and income in eight major occupational categories. Mean education is the average number of years of schooling completed, and mean income shows the average monthly income in Malay

18

Table 3.2:

Ranking of Major Occupational Categories of Married Men, by Mean Monthly Income and Mean Years of Schooling, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.
Total

Occupation

Population2 Inc. Ed.

Malay

Inc.
$280 291

Ed.

Chinese Inc. Ed.

Indian Inc. Ed.

Number of Men3 Inc. Ed.

Professional, Technical, Administrative, Executive, $357 and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers 309 Sales Workers 217 Service Workers 208 Craftsmen and Production Process Workers 179 Transport and Communication Workers 152 Laborers, including Miners 108 67 Agricultural Workers Total 135

8.2 9.0 5.3 5.9 4.9

4.8 4.0 3.2 4.4

107 201
125 138 100 57 98

7.3 8.4 4.4 6.0

4.1 4.5 4.7 3.1 3.9

$459

336 267 203 207

9.2 9.5 5.8

6.1 4.7

$491

308

242 200
214

10.5 0.6 4.8 4.5

358 224 433

314
444

344 211 431 294

6.7
5.1 3.8 3.8

416 304 329 2847 5174

186 127 136 232

5.0 3.4 3.7 5.6

127 96
101 160

5.0

322 344 2873 5312

In Malaysian dollars (in 1967, one U.S. dollar three Malaysian dollars) ^he total population includes Malays, Chinese, and Indian men plus those (2 percent of total) of other ethnic groups. "Ni is the weighted number of cases (married men) reporting both income and occupation. N2 is the weighted number of cases (married men) reporting both education and occupation.
Source: 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey

sian dollars; both measures are shown by occupation of the total population of married males as well as of each ethnic community. have arranged the eight major occupations in rank order from highest mean income and education to lowest. Although the general pattern of a socioeconomic hierarchy emerges, there are a number of inconsistencies. For the total population the mean income of professional and administrative occupations is almost $50 more than that of clerical occupations, while the mean education of clerical workers is almost a year longer than that of professionals and administrators. Similarly, education and income yield different ranks between sales and service occupations. There is also considerable variation in the pattern of differentials between occupational categories. There are sizable differences between some occupations and only minor differences between others. One of the problems in using a crude occupational classification is the considerable socioeconomic heterogeneity within each major occupation category. Nevertheless, the overall pattern shows that occupation is an important indicator of such other socioeconomic measures as education and income.

For most occupations, the mean income and education of Malay men is below that of Chinese and Indians. This may suggest that the same occupational category represents a different composition of specific occupations in different ethnic communities. There are also a few occupations in which the hierarchy is not the same in all ethnic groups. Among the Malay population clerical occupations rate, in general, above the professional and administrative; sales occupations rank much lower in the Malay socioeconomic hierarchy than in the total population. suspect that most Malay men engaged in sales or commerce work in very small rural shops.
There is a sharp break between the lowest urban occupation, laborers, and agricultural workers in the Malay population. There are almost no socioeconomic differences between laborers and fanners among the Chinese and Indians; if anything, agricultural occupations rate above laborers. believe the explanation lies in the differences between the agricultural workforce of the Malay and non-Malay population, most Malays among them being small land owners or tenant farmers in the village economy, while most of the Chinese and Indians are rubber tappers or laborers, who work on plantations and receive cash income. The average cash incomes of Chinese and Indians in agriculture are twice those of Malay farmers, though they may receive less income in kind.

In spite of these variations. Table 3.2 may be taken as evidence that the hypothesis of a socioeconomic hierarchy of the Peninsular Malaysian occupational structure is valid.
Socioeconomic Change, 1931-1967 To place occupational changes in the context of socioeconomic conditions as shown in data of 1931, 1947, 1957, and 1967, examined three periods: 1931 to 1947, 1947 to 1957, and 1957 to 1967.

The period from 1931 to 1947 contains both the world-wide economic Depression of the 1930s and World War II. The economic Depression emanating from the industrialized nations hit Peninsular Malaysia particularly hard

20

because the foundation of the Malaysian economy was the export of rubber and tin to the West, the decline of which caused the economy to shrink sharply. In late 1941, the Japanese captured the country and occupied it until 1945. Cut off completely from foreign sales except to Japan, Malaysia probably endured prolonged hardship. From 1931 to 1947 there was only a small increase in the proportion of the population living in urban areas. The second period, 1947 to 1957, encompassed the last decade of British colonial rule as well as a protracted jungle war with indigenous guerilla forces. It was also, however, a period of economic recovery from the Depression and the Japanese occupation. Although economic progress was modest in the immediate post-war years, the rubber boom from 1949 to 1952, coinciding with the Korean War, resulted in a doubling of the Gross National Product of Malaya (both Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore) (Silcock, 1963b: 243). The price of rubber had a major impact on the Malaysian economy: over one-fourth of the employed population worked directly in rubber industries in both 1947 and 1957 (Fell, 1960:31). The price of rubber rose by over four hundred percent from 1949 to 1951 (Silcock, 1963b:247). Then, too, between 1947 and 1957, as mentioned earlier, the jungle warfare or "Emergency" of the 1950s led the colonial government to relocate hundreds of thousands of rural inhabitants, largely Chinese, into "new villages" which were or became small towns, and their compulsory urbanization appears to have had the effect in widening occupational differences between the Chinese and the Malays. The final period, 1957 to 1967, saw the dawn of the independent era in 1963. The independent government played a more active role than did the colonial government in promoting economic development, especially in increasing public investment in education and rural public works (see Ness, 1964; and Malaysia, 1965). Economic growth was much more stable, averaging about six percent annually in Gross Domestic Product (Department of Statistics, 1971a). Also in the first decade of independence, the government set up the objective of improving the social and economic condition of the Malay population. Because of the sensitive nature of this issue, the public policy was often phrased without naming any one particular ethnic community, such as in the announcement: "The first major objective of the plan is to provide facilities and opportunities for the rural population to improve its levels of economic and social well being" (Malaysia, 1963:2). Although this policy does not necessarily imply it, it seems that change in occupational pursuits would be an inevitable consequence of increasing incomes and educational opportunities in rural areas.

Occupations and Ethnicity, 1931-1967 Table 3.3 shows the trends in the occupational structure by ethnic group of employed males in Peninsular Malaysia in 1931, 1947, 1957, and 1967. The trend in the overall occupational patterns of the total employed male population is shown in the first column under each period. In agricultural occupations the percentage rose slightly from 1931 to 1947, then declined by
In recent years, government policy has been explicit. The Second Malaysian Plan 1971-1975, (1971) includes specific objectives to restructure the Malaysian society and economy to correct the ethnic economic imbalance.
21

i^j

Table 3.3:

"-

Occupational Composition of Employed Males, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967.
1931
1947 Chinese Malay 1.7% 1.6%
1.3

Occupation*
Professional and Technical Workers Administrative, Executive and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Craftsmen and Production Process Workers Transport and Communication Workers Miners Laborers Agricultural Workers

Total

Malay
1.5%
0.6 0.9 2.1 2.5

Chinese

Indian

Total

Indian

1.5%

1.2%
0.7 2.4 14.1 6.5

1.1% 0.3 1.7 7.7 9.6

1.9%
0.9 2.4 9.3 6.5

2.1% 0.7 2.7 9.9 10.9

0.6 1.9 8.0 5.8 6.7 4.8

5.1 7.4 57.8

0.6
1.1 2.8 4.1

3.5 16.4
7.3

2.6
4.3 0.2 2.8 82.4 0.2 100.0%

10.9
4.2 10.5 8.1 40.8 0.6 100.0%

4.6
7.2 1.9 14.3 50.9 0.8 100.0%

8.9
4.5 2.1 3.9 59.5 0.1 100.0%

4.1 4.0 0.6 2.8 78.2 0.1 100.0%

13.9
4.0 4.0 2.8 45.1 0.1 100.0%

9.4 7.6
1.7 10.2 44.7 0.1 100.0%

Not Reported Total Employed

0.5 100.0%

*This list contains the ten major occupational categories (one digit level) in the 1957 classification (see Appendix B). The categories have been slightly re-worded for consistency and ranked according to the socioeconomic hierarchy in Table 3.2. Two categories from Table 3.2 are here divided into separate categories: Professional and Administrative is now Professional and Technical, and Administrative, Executive, and Managerial; also in the Laborers category. Miners are separated from other Laborers.

Table 3.3: CONTINUED

1957

Occupation Professional and Technical Workers Administrative, Executive, and Managerial Workers
Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Craftsmen and Production Process Workers Transport and Communication Workers Miners Laborers Agricultural Workers

Total
2.9%
1.5

Malay
2.7% 0.2 2.2 2.8 8.7
4.9 3.7 0.0 4.3

Chinese

Indian

Total

1967 Malay Chinese

5.1% 1.0 3.2 4.4 5.8 4.6% 4.0 6.2 19.7 5.7 20.3

Indian

2.8% 2.6 4.4

2.6%
1.3 5.3 13.4

5.1% 2.2 4.8 10.5 6.1

5.4%

3.6 10.3 9.1 11.6

4.1

19.3 5.9
20.2

8.9
13.4 4.7 0.1 12.8 37.2 0.3 100.0%

1.6 6.6 9.3 8.0

13.4 6.2 0.9 13.5 34.9 0.1 100.0%

12.6
5.2 1.1 9.1 43.2 0.0 100.0%

6.9 4.7 0.4 8.7 59.8 0.0 100.0%

O.I
6.5 50.1

Not Reported Total Employed

0.4 100.0%

69.8 0.3 100.0%

4.6 0.2 7.3 32.3 0.4 100.0%

5.5 2.0 8.5 23.5 0.0 100.0%

Sources: The percentages

are based upon figures reported in Appendix Table D.I, drawn from: Vlieland, 1932:252-324. Del Tufo, 1949:477-505. Fell, 1960: 128-137. Choudhry, 1970 (Appendix): 62-67.

almost ten points from 1947 to 1957 and then by seven more points from 1957 to 1967. This was accompanied by increases in the percentages employed in professional and administrative as well as clerical and craft occupations, but in most other categories the percentage of the total employed seems rather stable. Service occupations rose in 1957, then declined. think this is due to the large number of armed forces personnel, including many British and other Commonwealth troops, who were still mobilized for the "Malayan Emergency". Laborers declined between 1931 to 1947, then rose steadily in the rest of the time period being considered.
The occupational trends in each ethnic group are similar, but there are differences in the magnitude and timing of shifts in the occupational structure. Malay men were much more likely to be in agricultural occupations, over 82 percent appearing in this category in 1931, dropping to slightly below 60 percent in 1967, most of the decrease occurring after 1947. However, the proportion of Chinese and Indian males in agriculture also declined, leaving only 24 and 35 percent, respectively, in this occupation in 1967. The case of Chinese employment in agriculture is especially interesting. The proportion of Chinese employed in agriculture rose from 40.8% in 1931 to 45.1 % in 1947, then declined sharply during the next intervals. The decline after 1947 seems to be readily explained by the relocation of rural Chinese during the "Emergency" in the early 1950s as well as by the rural-to-urban migration normal in a time of economic development. However, the increase during the 1930s and 1940s is puzzling. Two potential factors need to be considered, the peculiar age distribution of the Chinese population and the possibility of urbanto-rural migration during the Depression and war years. The male Chinese age structure during the first part of the twentieth century was unbalanced due to the heavy inflow of adult immigrants which contrasts with growth by natural increase (Table 3.4). There was a sharp relative

Table 3.4:

Age Distribution of the Chinese Population by Sex: Peninsular Malaysia, 1921, 1931, and 1947.
1921 Males Females 14.3% 33.5% 56.7 75.1 10.6 9.8 100.0% 100.0%

Age
0-14 15-49 50+ Total

1931 Males Females 20.3% 35.4% 69.2 55.0 10.5 9.6 100.0% 100.0%

1947 Males Females 37.6% 40.7% 48.4 49.5 12.9 10.9 100.0% 100.0%

Source: T.E. Smith, 1952:70.

as well as an absolute decline in the number of male Chinese in the working ages (defined here as 15 to 49) from 1931 to 1947, the result of a restriction of male Chinese immigration during the 1930s. As large cohorts of male Chinese left the working ages by death, retirement, or emigration, they were replaced by relatively smaller cohorts of locally-bom Chinese who had come of working age. These additions to the Chinese work force were perhaps more
24

likely to be rural and agricultural than those who left the work force for the above reasons. Another possible explanation of the relative increase of Chinese men in agriculture is that the hard years of the Depression and the war "pushed" many marginal Chinese urban workers and tin miners to unclaimed jungle land to eke out a subsistence living or to engage in small-scale agriculture. It is riot possible to test this hypothesis; however, have compared the types of agricultural activities of Chinese men in 1931 and 1947 (Table 3.5). The total
Table 3.5:
Detailed Occupational Composition of Employed Chinese Males in Agricultural and Fishing Occupations*: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947.
1931

Occupation Rice Farmers Rubber Farmers

1947

Coconut Farmers Oil Palm Farmers Fruit and Vegetable Farmers Rearers and Poultry & Livestock

Forresters and Woodcutters

Other Agricultural Workers Fishermen Total Employed

5,174 158,443 3,755 117 41,514 6,221 12,877 29,901 13,496 271,496

33,940 18,036 3,342 2,070 68,991 4,277 8,298 6,957 17,491 263,402

*The Malaysian occupational classification for these years included nonagricultural activities such as forestry and woodcutting under "Agricultural." Sources: Vlieland, 1932:294 and 319. Del Tufo, 1949:477. number of Chinese men in agriculture and fishing declined, but there were substantial increases of them in the cultivation of rice, fruit and vegetables, and in fishing. This would seem to be consistent with the explanation of urban to rural migration by the Chinese. Another influence on this process might have been the Japanese mistreatment of Malaysian Chinese during the Japanese occupation of the country from 1941 to 1945. Both because the Japanese were then waging an active war in China and because most of the local resistance fighters in Malaysia were Chinese, the Japanese occupation forces were said to be more hostile to Chinese than to either Malays or Indians, and this may have led some Chinese to migrate to rural areas to escape mistreatment. Of course, much happened between 1945 and 1947, and it is risky to conclude that the 1947 data reflect only the experience of the Depression and the War. The decline in agriculture since 1947 affected all three ethnic groups: the Malays and Chinese showed a reduction of twenty percentage points, while the Indians were fewer by ten percentage points (Table 3.3). Since the Indian and Chinese had a smaller share in agricultural occupations in 1947, their decline from 1947 to 1957 was a greater percentage of their initial agricultural
25

population than was the case of the Malays. In each ethnic community the common losses in agriculture reflected different kinds of agricultural activity. Most Malays in agriculture were subsistence farmers working their own land or tenants on the land of wealthier villagers. Almost all Indian agriculturalists were laborers on large rubber estates and more recently .on oil palm estates. The Chinese were both: many worked as laborers on estates, but there were also many small Chinese farmers who grew vegetables, tobacco, or some other cash crop. Table 3.6 presents evidence that the sharp decline in Malay farmers was due to a decrease in the proportion of Malays classified as primary rice cultivators from 46 percent in 1947 to 20 percent in 1967. There was in increase in proportion of Malays in rubber cultivation. Among the Chinese, the change from 1947 to 1957 was a decline in the growing of rice and "other crops", (both generally subsistence crops), while the 1957-1967 drop was largely in the rubber sector. Among the Indians, the decline has been almost completely in the rubber industry, the most rapid decrease occurring from 1957 to 1967. It seems evident the trend out of agricultural employment is not limited to any particular crop or subdivision within it.
Table 3.3 shows increases in all groups in white collar occupations (professional and technical, administrative, executive, and managerial, and clerical). In professional occupations, it appears that general parity has persisted among the three ethnic groups overtime. For instance, in 1931, professionals among the three ethnic group ranged from 1.1 to 1.5 percent and in 1967, it was from 4.6 to 5.4 percent. However, within this major occupation internal differences appear in the detailed occupational categories, classified by ethnicity (Table 3.7). While the majority of professionals from each group were teachers and "other professionals", Chinese and Indians were more likely to be in medical and other professions high in status than were Malays.

For administrative and clerical occupations, there has been a growing differential between Malays and non-Malays (Table 3.3). Both classes of occupation increased, especially from 1947 to 1967, but the ethnic differentials remained. think there are two major factors affecting the ethnic differential in white-collar jobs. First, in many white-collar occupations, paper credentials or education is a major determinant of who gets a job, so that much of the ethnic differentials in white-collar jobs reflect unequal educational qualifications. (This is a hypothesis which will be directly tested in chapter 6). The other consideration is the role of recruitment in the public and private sector. Many of the establishments in the private sector may give preference to relatives or clan members in hiring white-collar workers, and this is probably true of other jobs as well. Since Chinese and Indians are more urban and more likely to be employers, such a policy would effectively discriminate against Malays. It should also be noted that even if preferential hiring of non-Malays were not practiced, but widely believed to be practiced, it would discourage Malays from applying. Within the public sector the government must generally rely on more the universalistic criteria of paper qualifications, although there are practices which give preference to Malay applicants on certain government jobs. Basically, this is a quota system to maintain a balance between Malays and non-Malays-but these were flexible since only "qualified" applicants with proper educational credentials could be considered.
26

Table 3.6:

Detailed Occupational Composition of Employed Chinese Males in Agricultural and Fishing Occupations*: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947.

Perceritage of the Tota Employfed Popiilation

Malay Industry
Rice Rubber

Chinese

Indian

Coconut
Oil Palm

Tea
Other Crops

Forestry
Fishing

and Hunting

Total Employed2

1967 1957 1947 1947 1967 1967 1957 1974 1957 1.3% 1.0% 0.4% 0.2% 0.2% 45.7% 33.7% 19.7% 5.9% 38.5 30.8 42.2 14.1 24.1 24.4 21.5 20.1 19.3 3.2 2.7 1.9 0.7 0.5 3.4 3.0 0.6 3.7 5.6 0.6 2.0 1.9 0.4 0.2 1.0 0.4 0.2 0.3 0.6 0.1 0.1 0.1 1.3 2.2 1.9 6.7 7.5 3.1 13.8 5.5 3.0 0.1 0.1 1.6 1.9 0.6 0.9 {0.2 {5.3 {3.1 0.2 0.3 3.1 3.4 5.4 6.5 78.8% 70.9% 59.1% 46.8% 35.7% 26.0% 50.3% 45.6% 40.9%

Because these data are based upon an industrial rather than an occupational classification, both the categories
and figures are slightly different from the earlier tables based upon occupational composition. ^he Malaysian industrial classification for these years includes some non-agricultural activities under the major category of agriculture.

Sources: Del Tufo, 1949:442. Fell, 1960:102-103. Choudhry, 1970 (Appendix): 52

Table 3.7:

Detailed Occupational Composition of Employed Males in Professional and Technical Occupations, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1967.

IVlalay
% of Total

Occupation
Architects and Engineers Scientists Physicians and Dentists Other Medical Teachers

Lawyers
Others Total Employed

Number 522 433 299 2,045 28,379 34

Employed
0.1 0.1 0.0 0.3 3.6 0.0
1.1

Chinese % of Total Number Employed 0.3 1,934 0.0 50

Inclian
% of Total
Number 421 239 792

Employed
0.2 0.1 0.4 0.8 2.2 0.1 1.6

820 2,033 13,207

203

8,570 40,282

5.1%

8,189 26,436

0.1 0.4 2.3 0.0 1.4 4.6%

1,691 4,670
10

3,350 11,273

5.4%

Source: Choudhry, 1970 (Appendix): 62-67.

Perhaps the widest differential in the whole structure is in sales occupations where in 1967 the percentage of Malays was less than one-quarter of the percentage of Chinese and less than one-half of the percentage of Indians (Table 3.3). Overall sales employment grew only from 8.0 to 10.5 percent from 1931 to 1967, allowing not much flexibility to narrow this differential. The comments made above about hiring in the private sector may apply more strongly here, for much of the employment in trade is in small non-Malay shops were the hiring of children and relatives would prevent any reduction in the ethnic differential.
Service occupations is a residual category whose composition has been changing. While personal service occupations, especially that of domestic servant, were the major part of this category in earlier periods, police and military personnel have been a growing and important segment since 1957. Thus that the armed forces and police are largely Malay may account for the change in the ethnic composition.2 The proportion in transport and communication occupations has been fairly steady in spite of tremendous technological changes that occurred from 1931 to 1967 (Table 3.3). Indians show a slightly higher propensity to enter transport and communications occupations than do the other ethnic groups. The differential has narrowed only slightly. The other major area where there has been a substantial ethnic differential has been among craftsmen and production process workers, a category which also includes overseers and equipment operators. There was a considerable increase of Malay craftsmen between 1931 and 1967, but a much greater increase among the Chinese and Indians, and although the differential between Malays and non-Malays decreased slightly between 1957 and 1967, the margin remained wide.

One occupation where the ethnic differential seems to be narrowing significantly is that of laborer: by 1967 the involvement of Malays had increased, but that of the other communities had decreased (Table 3.3).
What conclusions can be drawn from these data? There seems to have been a general upgrading of the occupational structure in all three ethnic communities with reductions in agricultural employment and increases in the whitecollar and craft occupations. However, there are substantial differences between groups, particularly between the Malays and non-Malay communities, some of which, such as those found in sales and craft occupations were evident in 1931 and continued until 1967. Other differentials, such as those in administrative occupations, have emerged during the period under study. Among workers in services, transport and communication, as well as laborers, there seems to have been a narrowing of the ethnic differentials. Does all this mean that there has been a trend towards ethnic equality in the occu-

pational structures?

The 1967/68 Socioeconomic Household Survey missed the institutional population which included large numbers of military and police living in barracks.

29

Differences in Occupational Structures To describe the pattern of similarities and differences presented in Table 3.3 in occupational structures of three ethnic groups at four points in time is a complex and sometimes confusing task. While all the important information is there, it is not very easy to see the overall pattern or trend because of the mass of detail. An alternative way to analyze these data is to summarize the information by means of an index which measures the differences between two percentage distributions. One such measure will be used here, the Index of Dissimilarity or Delta Index (see previous references). The delta index has a theoretical range from "0" which indicates complete similarity between two distributions to "100" which indicates complete dissimilarity. The delta index can be interpreted as the minimun percentage of one group which would have to be redistributed in order to match the percentage distribution of the other group.

Table 3.8 shows delta indexes for comparisons among the three ethnic groups at four points in time. The upper panel shows the deltas for withinethnic group comparisons, that is, the indexes which measure the shift in the occupational composition in each community over time. The diagonal of each ethnic matrix contains zeroes to indicate the comparison of a population with itself. The row off the diagonal (which is underlined) indicates the shifts between one date and the next. In the first two inter-period comparisons, the occupational structures of the Chinese and Indians changed more than did the Malays while the reverse is true in the most recent period, 1957 to 1967. A number of studies have shown that the occupational structure of a society undergoing economic and social development becomes increasingly diversified with a decreasing proportion of agricultural occupations and a growth of industry and of urban occupations (Farrag, 1964; Moore, 1966). If this is occurring, then the secular changes in the occupational structure should be following an evolutionary path from a traditional to some modem structure.
While this model need not be taken as completely predictive of change, it does give a useful empirical expectation-that is, that the changes in the occupational structure are cumulative overtime. In terms of the measure used here, the delta index which compares distributions across two or three time periods should be equal to the sum of the delta indexes for each inter-period comparison. While this evolutionary model is usually posited in theories which relate changes in the occupational structure to economic development, it is clear from Table 3.8 that there were occasional reversals. For the Malay occupational structure, there were a total of 27 percentage points of shifting (sum of 4.6, 9.2, and 13.2) from 1931 to 1967, however, this resulted in a net redistribution of only 22.8 percentage points in that interval. For the Malay population, most of the shifts in the occupational structure have been cumulative.

In the Chinese occupational structure there was a total of 39.9 percentage points of gross movement which resulted in only 27.0 percentage points of net change from 1931 to 1967. Pan of the movement from the first two periods, 1931 to 1947 and 1947 to 1957, seems to have been in opposite directions. However, the shifts from 1947 to 1967 seem clearly cumulative.
30

Table 3.8:

Indexes of Dissimilarity Between Occupational Distributions of Employed Males, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967.
Delta Indexes For Within-Ethnic-Group Comparisons Over Malay Chinese 1947 1957 1967 1931 1947 1957 1967 1931 0 0 0 12.6 0 11.1 9.3 0 20.4 18.0 0 20.6 18.7 13.2 0 27.0 25.5 9.3 0 21.0
Time Indian 1947 1957

1931 1947 1957 1967

1931 0 4.6 13.4 22.8

1967

0 14.0 15.4

0 7.5

Delta Indexes For Between-Ethnic-Group Comparison at Each Period

1947 1957 33.2 40.4 Malay and Indian 33.4 32.7 Chinese and Indian 15.2 14.5 Source: Calculated from percentage distributions in Table 3.3

Index Between Malay and Chinese

1931 42.0 32.2 22.5

1967 37.0 24.8 20.7

In the Indian population a total of 32.6 gross percentage change in the occupational structure resulted in only 21.0 points of cumulative change from 1931 to 1967. In particular, the two most recent periods do not seem to have given a common direction to change in the Indian occupational structure. Without quibbling over choice of words, one might say that the evolutionary trend apparent in most of the period is an upgrading of the occupational structure. This includes a movement out of agriculture and an increase in white collar and craft occupations. Actually the delta index measures only the amount of change in the occupational composition and not its direction. However, since we do know the overall trends as evidenced in the actual data on occupations, it seems fairly accurate to label the evolutionary trend of cumulative shift from 1931 to 1967 as a measure of the upgrading of the occupational structure. If this is so, then the upper panel shows that while the Chinese occupational structure progressed or redistributed itself by 27 percentage points, the Indian and Malay communities had a net redistribution only 21.0 and 22.8 percentage points, respectively. The lower panel Table 3.8 shows the three inter-ethnic comparisons for each time point; each time-series can be interpreted as the trend in ethnic equality (or similarity) in the occupational structure. From 1931 to 1947, the occupational distributions of Malays and Chinese became more similar (a decline of almost nine points from 42.0 to 33.2). Then there was a divergence from 1947 to 1957 of seven points in the delta index, but it declined slightly again from 1957 to 1967. The degree of difference between the Malay and Indian occupational structures was virtually constant from 1931 to 1957, then declined somewhat from 1957 and 1967. The pattern of difference between Chinese and Indian occupational structures fluctuated, declining from 1947 to 1957, and then widening from 1957 to 1967.
The interpretation of Table 3.8 in relationship to the social, economic and political conditions of the period is perplexing. There are not parallel timeseries data on socioeconomic changes during this entire era, and even if there were, problems of how these social and economic changes differentially affected the occupational patterns of each ethnic group would remain unresolved. In spite of the obvious risks offer an interpretative framework for the trend in occupational differentials. Although this involves conjecture, it is an attempt to raise issues not to provide a final interpretation of the socioeconomic causes of ethnic inequality. The discussion is focussed on the pattern of differentials between the Malays and the Chinese who together form 85 percent of the population.

Interpretation of Occupational Trends During the period of 1931 to 1947, the occupational structures of Malays and Chinese became less dissimilar, that is, more equal in terms of occupational distribution. The most important factor in the process was the proportion employed in agriculture which increased among the Chinese and decreased among the Malays. However, even if deltas are calculated on the basis of only non-agricultural occupations, the same lessening of inequality is evident (see Appendix E), albeit to a much smaller degree. suggest that the economic Depression of the 1930s and the continuing hardships of the Japanese occu32

pation in the early 1940s were the prime cause of this growing similarity. The major decline of non-agricultural employment among the Chinese during this period was in the category of miners (10.5 to 4.0%) and laborers (8.1 to 2.8%). Perhaps the years of hardship forced many marginal urban workers and miners who lost their jobs to migrate to the fringes of the jungle to become subsistence farmers, and as well, discouraged rural Chinese from leaving agriculture. As noted earlier, immigration of Chinese males was all but stopped in the early 1930s. This led to a situation where replacement in the Chinese work force was dependent on much smaller cohorts of Chinese adolescents replacing larger cohorts of older Chinese adults who died, retired, or emigrated. Perhaps this process worked in the direction of bringing more Chinese into farming than into other occupations. For Malays, the slow momentum of the twentieth century continued to lower the proportion in agriculture (82.4 to 78.2 percent) and increase slightly the number in other occupations. Among the social forces at work, increasing educational opportunity and contact with urban areas were probably the most important. The year 1947 was two years after the end of the Japanese occupation and conditions may have changed substantially in that time. Whether the increased similarity in occupational distributions meant greater socioeconomic equality is an unanswered question. It is possible that the increasing proportion of Chinese in agriculture was at a higher economic level than the average Malay farmer. However, Table 3.5 indicated that most of the increase of the Chinese cultivators was in rice, fruit and vegetable farming, and in fishing. Although their crops may represent involvement in the market economy, their level of living was probably quite close to that of subsistence farmers. The post-war period, 1947 to 1957, saw growing differences between the Malay and Chinese occupational structures. The proportion of Chinese employed in agriculture declined from 45.1 to 32.3 percent while the corresponding figures for Malays were 78.2 to 69.8 percent, and more Chinese-also became administrative, sales, and craft workers than did Malays (Table 3.3). As noted earlier, this was a period of economic recovery and growth, although uneven. Why were the Chinese more able to take advantage of the emerging opportunities than were the Malays? One reason might be that the Chinese were more likely to be in urban areas where the opportunities were greater. Also the relatively greater distribution of education among Chinese as compared to Malays must have made a difference, as did probably the forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of rural Chinese during the Emergency in the early 1950s in "new villages, which resulted in a sharp increase in the proportion of urban Chinese. This undoubtedly led to occupational shifts, and probably also provided greater educational opportunities forChinese youth. It seems strange at first glance that ethnic socioeconomic differentials widened during years of economic progress, but that appears to have been the
case.

There were continued changes in the occupational structures of Chinese and Malays from 1957 to 1967, and the gap between the two seems to have narrowed slightly (Table 3.3). This is evident in agricultural, sales, craft, and laborer occupations. As a consequence of the governmental building of more rural schools, thus providing more educational opportunities, and the

33

encouraging of progress in various areas, including the growing public sector, the Malay occupational structure in terms of percentage distribution shifted as much in ten years as it had in the proceeding twenty-six. Whether these public efforts at ending ethnic inequality in occupational and other economic patterns will be successful will be a most important question in the coming

years.
Conclusions Does it appear from this analysis that there is some trend toward ethnic assimilation or greater similarity in occupational composition as might have been predicted by Robert Parks theories? While the theoretical writings on social change and ethnic relations do not really present a "testable proposition", they do offer indications as to the direction of change. However, the Malaysian data do not indicate any clear secular trend. Ethnic differentials (Malay-Chinese) narrowed between 1931 and 1947, then widened between 1947 and 1957, and then narrowed slightly between 1957 and 1967. The differentials within major occupational categories, the trend out of agriculture and the growth of white-collar occupations are similar in all groups, although it is more rapid among Chinese and Indians than among Malays. The major differentials in sales and craft occupations seem, however, to have narrowed only slightly in the last decade.

Rather than searching for a single explanation such as industrialization or urbanization as the most important in ethnic occupational trends, it would seem more useful to seek explanations in the specific organizational changes within the occupational structure. For instance, the movement out of agriculture can be seen as the result of several social forces common to all groups in various types of farming activity. Important among factors "pushing" people out of agriculture might be: rural over-crowding or simply too many children to inherit a little land or a job on an estate, higher wages in urban areas, declining prices and terms of trade for agricultural products, and increasing education of rural youth. The growth of white-collar jobs has been stimulated by the growth of the public sector and to a lesser extent by large-scale commercial enterprise. Since many white-collar jobs are probably dependent upon "paper qualifications", ethnic differentials may reflect differences in educational attainment. Education in the English language schools, traditionally the most prestigious, has been almost a prerequisite of admission to higher education and whitecollar jobs. Since most English schools were in urban areas and proportionately more Indians and Chinese were there, this probably affected the unequal ethnic attainment of high-status jobs. Perhaps another set of structural limitations inhibits the increase of Malays in sales and craft occupations, where the greatest differentials exist. There most of the job opportunities are probably in small family enterprises. The mere habit of hiring employees from among kin or clan would restrict opportunities in ethnic communities with relatively few employers. Table 3.9 shows the distribution of males in each ethnic group by employment status. While almost 7 percent of employed Chinese men and almost 3 percent of Indians are employers, this is true of less than one percent of Malays. This tends to restrict

34

Table 3.9:

Employment Status of Employed Males by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1967.

Employment Status Employers Own Account Workers Employees/Wage & Salary Earners Unpaid Family Workers
Total

Total 3.3% 29.1

60.2 7.3 100.0%

Malays 0.9% 40.4

50.5 8.2 100.0%

Chinese 6.9% 21.3

63.5

Indians

2.9%
8.4 87.3 1.4

8.3 100.0%

100.0%

Source: Choudhry, 1970 (Appendix): 42-43.

recruitment of Malays into sectors of the occupational structure where ethnicity may be considered as a criterion for employment, such as in small-scale commerce and industry. While a majority of jobs in manufacturing in 1968 were in establishments of 50 employees or more, a substantial number were in much smaller businesses (Table 3.10). It seems likely that the sales or commercial

Table 3.10:

Distribution of Establishments and Paid Employees in Manufacturing Industries, by Number of Employees: Peninsular Malaysia, 1968.

Paid Full-Time

Employees None
1-4 5-9

10-19 20-29 30-49 50-99 100-199 200-499 500+ Total

Number of Establishments 3,347 2,738 957 738 394 334 275 133 77 20 9,013

Percent
Distribution 37.2% 30.4 10.6 8.2 4.4 3.7 3.0 1.5

Number of Paid

Percent
Distribution 1.4%

Employees
1,823 8,506 7,725 1,455 10,425 13,188 19,186 18,662 22,617 16,670 130,257

6.5
5.9 8.8 8.0 10.1 14.7 14.3 17.4 12.8 100.0%

0.8
0.2 100.0%

Source: Department of Statistics, No date. Census of Manufacturing Industries, 1968:37.

sector is also largely made up of small stores and shops where to reduce ethnic differentials would be most difficult. Not only are ethnic preferences probably operative there, but relatively few Malays may consider seeking employment

35

where so few of their community are to be found. In other words, the threat of discrimination may be as real a barrier as the actual practice of it. Perhaps only when the economy is made up of large-scale economic organizations, more sensitive to government pressure than to family obligations, will there be a sizeable narrowing of these differentials. The period of forty years would have provided a sufficient length of time for ethnic occupational differentials to decline sharply if there were perfectly free social mobility (independence of sons occupation and fathers occupation; see Lieberson and Fuguitt, 1966). The fact that such differentials are still large after this length of time indicates that there are still structural blocks to occupational mobility. Additional quantitative analysis of ethnic occupational trends and differentials and their co-variation with social changes in the society and economy should allow for a more precise explanation of the Malaysian case and provide more basis for comparative theoretical development.

36

CHAPTER 4

INTERGENERATIONAL OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY:

ETHNIC DIFFERENCES
While the historical analysis in the earlier chapters was dependent upon the published tabulations from censuses and the 1967-68 Socioeconomic Survey, this and the subsequent chapters report material based upon analyses from the unit record data file of the West Malaysian Family Survey. As noted earlier, this was a national probability sample of 5,457 women between the ages of 15 and 45, with the sample stratified according to size of place. But all the data here have been weighted to give a representative sample of the universe of married women, age 15 to 45 in Peninsular Malaysia (for details on survey methods and weighting procedures, see National Family Planning Board, 1968:1-22). The analysis here is based upon data on a number of social and economic characteristics of their husbands, supplied by these women. The question whether a sample of husbands with wives in the childbearing years is representative of the entire male Malaysian labor force is addressed elsewhere (Hirschman, 1972a, chapter 4). It seems that, in general, the weighted sample of husbands is an adequate surrogate of the population of males in the working ages.

Social Mobility The evidence in chapter 3 shows that substantial occupational differentials between Malays, Chinese, and Indians have persisted for a long time, in spite of major changes in the occupational structure. A basic question is: How much of the current occupational structure reflects an inheritance of occupational status from father to son?
The investigation of intergenerational occupational mobility, often called the study of social mobility, has been a major focus of sociologists in the past

37

two decades

(Rogoff, 1953; Glass, 1954; Lipset and Bendix, 1959; Miller, 1960; Lopreato, 1965; Svalastoga, 1965; and Cutwright, 1968). Most of their research focused on urban industrialized societies, with a strong interest in measuring the amount of "opportunity" available. From this perspective, investigators sought to discover if the son of a manual worker had less chance of achieving a high-status occupation than the son of a non-manual worker, and if so, how much less. Related questions were of the variation in the availability of opportunity across time or between countries.
Earlier research applied the techniques of analyzing social mobility to the differential intergenerational occupational mobility of ethnic, racial, and immigrant communities (Matras, 1965, chapter 4; Lieberson and Fuguitt, 1966; and Duncan, 1968b). The goal was to describe and explain the different patterns of social mobility among sub-groups of the population. The extent to which various ethnic or racial communities fare unequally in the process of social mobility has been interpreted as lack of assimilation or discrimination by one group or another.

Measurement of Social Mobility

Most of the research in this area has used the standard occupational mobility table which presents the occupational distribution of a sample of adult men and a similar distribution of their fathers occupations in the marginals of the table with the patterns of intergenerational mobility shown in the cells. A variety of statistical procedures can be used to describe the mobility patterns in the cells of the basic table. One can discuss the proportion which is mobile-either upward or downward, the effect of being the son of a highstatus or low-status father on the probability of eventually entering a given occupation-and various other summary statistics of mobility. However, there are limits to the utility of such tables in examining anything more than the bivarate association of fathers and sons occupation. (A number of the methodological issues regarding the use and interpretation of mobility tables were discussed by Duncan, 1966b.) Any attempt at multivariate analysis using the standard social mobility table framework quickly becomes very cumbersome. It is possible to introduce third variables as controls and construct additional social mobility tables for each category of the control variable, but the result is very small frequencies in many cells, unless the sample is very large or the social mobility table has very few rows and columns. Additionally, reading and interpreting very large tables, controlling for other variables, becomes a complex task for both the analyst and the reader. In this analysis, presented standard intergenerational occupational mobility tables separately for the three major ethnic groupswhich demonstrates how difficult it becomes to summarize multivariate analysis using large mobility tables. Some analysts have tried to construct mobility indices, based upon difference scores between social positions of origin and of destination, and have then correlated this index with other relevant variables. The difficulty is that the mobility indexes of two individuals could be of equal magnitude but their actual movement in the social structure may be quite different. And to correlate other relevant characteristics, such as education, with
38

such a mobility index would be to lose the critical information of origins and destinations.

Another limitation in the analysis of mobility tables is that the intergenerational changes in them cannot be related in a determinate way with changes in the occupational structure over a span of years (Duncan, 1966b). Let us consider the usual case where the data on the distribution of men by occupation has been gathered from a representative survey of adult males. The distribution of the fathers by occupation is based upon their primary occupation as reported by their sons (sample of adult males). The array of these fathers by occupation does not refer to a specific earlier generation in the labor force at any point in time. Because of the variance in ages of fathers and sons, the distribution of fathers in the labor force of a specific cohort of sons may range from when the data were gathered (some fathers would be still currently working) to 70 or 80 years earlier. Another complication is that some fathers would be counted more than once because they have several sons in the current labor force while other men in the parental generation would not be counted at all, having no sons in the current labor force. These demographic facts limit any effort to relate traditional analysis of social mobility to the redistribution of status positions (occupations) over time or any effort to separate structurally induced mobility (resulting from changes in the occupational structure due to technological change) from exchange mobility (based upon the compensating movements of some persons up and others down). There have been several efforts to construct the appropriate models which would take into account the complicated processes of labor force entry and exit, differential fertility, and intra- and inter-generational mobility in dealing with overall changes in the occupational structure (Matras, 1961; Matras, 1967). However, it does not appear likely that such models can be widely utilized because of the dearth of the necessary empirical data.

An alternative conceptual framework for the study of social mobility has been suggested by Blau and Duncan (1967). Basically, they view the process of social mobility from a life-cycle perspective: an individual begins life at this origin status (fathers occupation), passes through the educational system and reaches an occupational destination. This view of the process or model leads to an evaluation of the relative effects of various social background factors upon socioeconomic attainment by multiple regression techniques. This form of analysis will be pursued in subsequent chapters; in this chapter, utilized the traditional intergenerational mobility table and variations of it to describe the ethnic stratification system of Peninsular Malaysia. Such an analysis will provide an introduction to the subsequent chapters as well as provide a summary perspective on the process of mobility.
Intergenerational Occupational Mobility, by Ethnicity Table 4.1 provides the percentage distribution of the social origins and adult occupational attainment of the sample of married men from the West Malaysia Family Survey. (I refer to the sample of married men as sons to contrast them with their fathers, whose occupational composition specifies their social origins.) As noted above, the distribution of fathers by occupation does not represent a real population at an earlier point in time, but these figures are
39

Table 4.1:

Occupational Composition of Married Men and Their Fathers, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.
Father Malay Chinese Indian

Occupation2
Total

Total
6.8% 4.2 8.4 5.8 8.4

Son Malay Chinese Indian

6.3% 2.8 3.9 6.4
4.5 9.1% 7.2 24.5 4.7 19.1 4.4% 6.7 5.3 5.0

Professional and Administrative Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Craftsmen and Production Process Workers Transport and Communication Workers Laborers Agricultural Workers

4.0%
2.3.

8.2 2.2 5.6

3.1% 1.2 3.9 1.8

3.4

6.5% 4.1 22.0 2.0

9.0

4.2% 4.9 7.7 5.3 12.4

12.5

Not Reported
Total

Weighted (N)

2.3 1.7 3.7 3.2 6.1 7.5 5.2 9.0 3.4 1.1 8.3 8.3 6.4 4.3 10.9 1.8 72.0 58.9 26.5 41.0 53.3 66.0 16.3 45.2 13.1 11.7 18.0 13.0 0.6 0.6 0.1 0.6 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 5457 3595 1153 610 5457 3595 153 610

The table heading of the sample of married men is titled "Son" to contrast them with the sample of their fathers. ^he list of eight major categories is the same as in Table 3.3 except Administrative workers have been combined with Professionals, and also Miners with Laborers, because of small sample frequencies in the categories.

Source: 1966-67 West Malaysia Survey.

meaningful as the sons starting places in the social structure (origin statuses). Of course, the sons in 1966-1967 were all adults, currently married to women in the child-bearing ages (15-45), and their current occupation in 1966-1967 is generally interpreted as reflecting their socioeconomic status in an hierarchy which is ordered on the basis of their mean education and income (see Table 3.2). The distribution of sons occupations reflects the ethnic socioeconomic differences discussed in chapter 3. Chinese and Indians are more likely to be in non-agricultural occupations than Malays. Chinese have the most dispersed occupational structure, with much higher than average proportions as sales workers and craftsmen and production process workers (skilled blue-collar occupations). Malays are most concentrated in agriculture (66%) and Chinese least so (16%) while Indians are in between (45%).
The ethnic differences in occupational composition of sons are partially reflected in the occupational distribution of fathers. The occupational patterns of fathers of each ethnic community show a more traditional structure, with a higher percentage in agriculture and lower percentage in most other whitecollar and blue-collar categories. It seems clear that there has been a net shift upward in occupational composition of this generation of sons over their fathers.

Expected and Observed Occupational Differences The occupational distribution of the sons in any ethnic group is a product of two factors: their distribution of origin statuses (fathers occupation) and the matrix of intergenerational occupational mobility probability rates. In fact, this can be expressed in simple matrix algebra as the multiplication of a vector by a matrix: Oz OiR 1. where 02 is the vector representing the occupational distribution of sons, Oi is the vector representing the occupational distribution of fathers, and R is the matrix of intergenerational occupational mobility rates. One way to measure the impact of the distribution of social origins in any ethnic group relative to the other communities is to substitute the matrix of intergenerational occupational mobility rates of the total population into the equation for each ethnic community. The results of such an exercise can be called "expected occupational distributions," based on the assumption that the process of social mobility is the same in all communities. The three equations of expected distributions for the sons of each ethnic group can be expressed in the same way with the additional appropriate subscripts:
2. 3. 4. Oa OuRT where 0 is an expected distribution, the subscripts 2 and refer to sons and their fathers, respectively, the subscripts T, M, C, and refer to the total population, Malays, Chinese, and Indians, respectively. 02M 02c
OlMRT OicRT

The expected occupational distributions of the population of sons are com-

41

pared with actual or observed distributions for each ethnic group in Table 4.2. The difference between the observed and expected within any ethnic community is due to the matrix of its transition probabilities since origin status is held constant. Similarly, if we compare the expected distributions across ethnic groups, the differences reflect only the differences in origin statuses by ethnicity, since the transition rates are held constant.
First, comparing observed and expected distributions within ethnic groups, it seems that one of the major consequences of an equal transition matrix for all groups would be to move more Malays into the non-agricultural sector, especially into sales, craft, and laborer categories. Interestingly, the proportions of Malay men in professional and administrative as well as service occupations would be slightly less if Malays had a mobility matrix equal to that of the total population. The opposite would be the situation of the Chinese, comparing their actual and observed occupational distributions. The proportion of Chinese in agriculture would be more than twice what it actually is, if the Chinese transition matrix were equal to that for all men. There would also be fewer Chinese in most non-agricultural occupations, especially in sales and craft jobs. Among the Indians, the comparison between observed and expected distributions shows fewer large differences than was true of Malays and Chinese. Basically, the same proportion would be in agriculture, but there would be increases in professional and administrative, sales, and service occupations and decreases in the clerical and blue-collar categories. Since the Chinese and Malays have the most unlike occupational distributions, it is not surprising that a universal pattern of social mobility (using the matrix of rates of intergenerational occupational mobility of the total population) would have the greatest effect on their distributions.
If we now compare the expected distributions between Malays, Chinese and Indians, we can see the differences that reflect only the unequal distribution of their origin statuses. Although the ethnic differences in expected distributions are less than those in the observed distributions, still, significant differences remain. The social heritage of Malay and Indian men as measured by the distribution of their fathers occupations makes them more likely than Chinese males to be in the agricultural sector and less likely to be in whitecollar occupations. One way to quantify the gap in the actual occupational distributions as between ethnic groups and to seee how much of this is due to the influence of the distribution of their origin statuses is to calculate delta indexes of dissimilarity between distributions. The delta between the Malay and Chinese observed occupational distributions in Table 4.2 is 51.4. This is reduced to 22.0 in the comparisons between their expected distributions. The similar figures for the comparisons between Malays and Indians are 24.6 and 14.7, and between Chinese and Indians are 31.6 and 7.7, respectively.
While it is clear that most of the observed difference between Malay and Chinese men is a result of different transition rates of social mobility, the remaining difference that can be attributed to unequal social origins alone (22.0) is still considerable. The difference between Malay and Indian occupational structures resulting from differential social origins (14.7) is considerably smaller, while the difference in the Chinese-Indian comparison (7.7)

42

Table 4.2:

Comparison of the Observed Occupational Distribution of Married Men and Their Expected Occupational Distribution,* by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.

Occupation
Professional and Administrative Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Craftsmen and Production Process Workers Transport and Communication Workers Laborers Agricultural Workers Not Reported Total

Malay
Observed
6.3% 2.8 3.9 6.4 4.5
5.2 4.3

Expected

Chinese Observed Expected

Observed
4.4% 6.7 5.3 5.0 12.5 9.0 11.8

Indian Expected

6.0% 3.3 6.6 5.6

7.1 5.4 6.0 59.6 0.5 100.0%

9.1% 7.2 24.5

4.7

8.5% 6.3 13.8 6.3

11.4

7.8% 5.6 8.9 6.7 10.9

6.8 7.5 44.9 0.9 100.0%

19.1
7.5 10.9 16.3 0.6 100.0%

66.0 0.6 100.0%

7.7 7.5 37.6 0.9 100.0%

45.2 0.1 100.0%

*Expected occupational distribution based upon the assumption that the intergenerational occupational mobility probabilities of each ethnic community are equal to those of the total population.

Source: 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey.

suggests that unequal distribution of origin statuses had only a minor effect on their occupational differences.

Patterns of Father-to-Son Mobility Let us now turn our attention to the patterns of movement within the occupational structure, first by examining a table of intergenerational occupational mobility rates of the total population, and then separately of each of the three ethnic communities. These tables are commonly called outflow percentage tables because they describe the distribution of occupational destinations of all those within each category of occupational origin (fathers occupation). The transition percentages of father-tp-son mobility for the total sample of married men are presented in Table 4.3.
One of the most noticeable aspects of Table 4.3 is the substantial amount of occupational inheritance. Generally, over a quarter of the sons of fathers in any occupation also wind up in that occupation. This is three or four times the likelihood of being in an occupation if the distribution of sons occupations were independent of fathers occupations. The least mobility is found among sons of farmers, almost 72% of whom also end up in agricultural careers. There is a substantial amount of reciprocal moves between professional and clerical occupations. The most likely destination of upwardly mobile persons is a professional career. Sons of transport and communication workers seem more likely to be upwardly mobile (especially into sales occupations) than do sons of other blue-collar workers. The most likely destination of a downwardly mobile person is a career in agriculture. Sons of laborers seem to be only minimumly more likely to be upwardly mobile than sons of farmers. All of this discussion assumes that there is a ranking of this occupational scale so one can speak reliably of upward and downward mobility. Indeed, there is definitely a set of higher-status occupations (white-collar) which is distinct from all the rest. But the lower part of the scale shows less consistency of ranking, and perhaps movement within it should not be taken as necessarily a definite change in social or economic
status.

Let us now turn to an analysis of the occupational mobility of each ethnic community. Table 4.4 presents three matrices of rates of intergenerational occupational mobility for each ethnic community, expressed in percentage form. In order to keep the numbers in many cells from becoming too small, the fathers occupational classification is reduced to four major categories (white-collar, sales, blue-collar, and agriculture). White-collar includes professional and administrative as well as clerical occupations. Blue-collar includes service, craft and production processes, transport and communication, and laborer occupations. Sales and agriculture were left as originally categorized. As noted earlier in discussions of Table 4.2, the differences in the transition rates (the three panels of Table 4.4) are only a partial determinant of ethnic differences in the occupational structure. The other partial determinant was ethnic differences in the distribution of social origins. The effect of the differential distribution of social origins was shown by comparing ethnic
44

Table 4.3:

Transition Percentages, Fathers Occupation to Current Occupation of Married Men: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.

Current Occupation
Fathers Occupation2 Professional and
Administrative Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Craftsmen and Production Process Workers Transport and Communication Workers Laborers Agricultural Workers

Prof.
28.Q

Cleric.
12.9 29.1 6.5 5.9

Sales Service Craft

T. & C. Labor Agric.

3.4 8.0 10.0 8.2

NR
0.5 0.9 0.1

Total

Weighted N
216 125 449 120 304

16.7 8.5 11.4

11.7

10.7 8.5 35.4 2.8

6.1 6.5 5.3 29.6

13.4 1.6 1.2 7.0

31.4 11.4 11.4 4.4 11.9 8.4
men.

3.0 2.9 5.2 7.6 7.2 10.5 22.2 5.2 9.2 6.4

22.0 16.6 17.0 27.6

22.5 13.3 34.4 71.9 37.7 53.3

100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

7.7
10.8 3.5 1.5
5.1 4.2

6.5
13.4 9.9 4.0 11.2 8.4

5.0 9.8 4.4 4.4 8.4 5.8

7.5

0.4
0.1 3.5

Not Reported
Total

10.2 2.7 4.3 6.1 6.8

20.5 8.1 4.0 9.2 6.1

0.3 1.4 0.6

125 100.0% 188 100.0% 100.0% 3213 100.0% 717 100.0% 5457

Current occupation refers to the occupation of the sample of married

Source: 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey

fathers occupation refers to the occupation of the fathers of the sample of married men.

differences in the expected distribution of current occupations. In a complementary fashion, the effect of ethnic differences in transition rates can be measured by comparing ethnic differences in current occupation (observed) and subtracting the ethnic differences in the expected distributions. For instance, the delta index between Malay and Chinese current occupational distributions was 51.4, and between the expected Malay and Chinese occupational distributions was 22.0. The difference between these two figures (51.422.0=29.4) is a result of the differences between the Malay and Chinese transitions rates shown in the first two panels of Table 4.4. Clearly these ethnic differences in transition rates determine overhalfofthe ethnic inequality (between Chinese and Malay males) in occupational distributions.

These patterns are shown in the cells of Table 4.4. We begin by examining the cells which represent occupational inheritance where sons follow their fathers careers (within these broad categories). In a square matrix, which had the same number of occupational categories for both the sons and their fathers, the occupational inheritance cells would be the diagonal of the table. Since this table has eight major occupational categories for sons and only four for fathers, occupational inheritance cells may have several occupational categories for sons to match those of the fathers classification. The appropriate cells representing occupational inheritance have been underlined in Table 4.4.

In general, Chinese men seem more likely to inherit white-collar and bluecollar (especially craft and laborer) occupations than are Indians and Malays. In the agricultural sector, the relationship is reversed: over 76 percent of the sons of Malay farmers inheriting their fathers jobs, and almost 67 percent of Indian sons of farmers do likewise, while only 36 percent of the sons of Chinese farmers go into agriculture. Socially mobile sons of Chinese farmers (also of blue-collar and white-collar fathers) are particularly likely to enter sales or craft occupations, which are perhaps more open to them because many of the employers are Chinese. Malay sons of blue-collar fathers are more likely to enter professional occupations than are either Chinese or Indians.
Downward mobility into agriculture is much more common among Malays and Indians than among Chinese. It is possible that some of the Malays have retired from their regular urban occupations and bought land in the village. Sons of Malay professionals are more likely to get into service and transport and communication occupations than are the comparable groups of Chinese and Indians, a situation which may reflect the internal heterogeneity of some of these categories. For instance, military and police forces are categorized as service workers. A military or police career may be more likely among sons of the Malay middle class than among Chinese or Indian youths.

Although this analysis allows us to separate the effects of dissimilar originstatus composition and differential rates of social mobility in explaining ethnic inequality in occupational attainment, it is not a convenient context in which to extend inquiry into other variables. Differential composition by rural and
urban origin, as well as differences in educational patterns may be important in accounting for ethnic differences in occupational distributions, but to examine them it would be necessary to extend the tabular analysis beyond the limits of the numbers of cases in the sample. Table 4.4 contained 135 cells,

46

Table 4.4: Fathers Occupation*

Transition Percentages, Fathers Occupation to Current Occupation of Married Men by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

Prof.
White Collar

Cleric.

Sales
4.9 22.6 3.0 2.7 5.7 3.9

2L6
6.3 14.7 4.5 6.2 6.3 27.0 10.2 6.2 6.3 5.2 9.1

-1AJ4.6 6.9 1.3 3.9 2.8

22.7 7.5 6.2 2.2 6.7 7.2

Sales Blue Collar Agriculture Not Reported Total

White Collar Sales Blue Collar Agriculture Not Reported Total
White Collar Sales Blue Collar

Service 9.9 7.4 13.8

4.4

Curnent Occupaition* M^ILAYS Craft T and C Labor

5.5 9.8

\Weighted

6.1 9.4

-2A
3.1 7.7 4.5 18.7 13.5 28.1 13.6 22.9 19.1

-LL2
3.9 6.9 5.2
4.7 9.4 7.4

11.9 6.4 2.8 3.9 5.1 6.8 3.4 4.7

3.5 6.5 6.2 3.7 6.0 4.3

Agric. 33.7 31.6 32.6

NR
0.1 2.0 1.6 0.3 1.6 0.6 0.8 0.4 1.3
0.6 0.6

76J.
50.1 66.0
1.0 7.6 10.6

Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

N
155 140 289 2590 422 3595

CHINESE
19.9 43.9 16.3 17.4 24.1 24.5
2.4 3.5 18.9 13.3
1.1

5.0
10.7
7,5

35.3
15.4 16.3

100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

100.0% 100.0%

10.9

122 253 264 306 208 1153 55 47 179 250

79

INDIAN
18.7 20.7 2.4 4.2 4.1 8.1 27.6 5.2 4.2 7.9 9.1 3.5 0.8 Agriculture 2.8 2.3 2.7 Not Reported 6.3 5.5 3.2 7.9 Total 4.4 6.7 5.3 5.0 *See notes of Table 4.3. Source: 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey 20.9 5.4 20.8 8.0 6.4 12.5 3.3 17.4 10.7 4.4 18.8 9.0 3.0 11.4 10.0 12.1 21.6 1.8 26.8 20.8 33.8
66.9

29.5 45.2

0.9 0.1

100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

610

which was acceptable since our total number of observations was 5,457. However, almost half of the number of observations were in three cells, representing farmers who were sons of farmers. To expand the analysis with additional control variables would result not only in many empty cells and many with small frequencies, but also in more complex description and interpretation than seems prudent. For this reason, postpone multivariate analysis till the next chapter, where regression techniques are used.

Conclusion

Analysis of ethnic differentials in social mobility in the occupational structure rests on the assumption that the distribution of occupations of adult men
can be explained by the distribution of their social origins (fathers occupations) and the transition matrix of intergenerational rates of occupational mobility. One might argue that what have considered determinants of the distribution of occupations are merely components, and that the real determinants are the causes that have led to differential distribution of social origins and the factors in the social structure that influence differential patterns of recruitment or selection into occupations. To this I can only respond that this is a preliminary examination of ethnic inequality, and that analysis of more remote causes must be built upon a firm foundation of more proximate determinants or components.

Approximately 43 percent of the delta index of inequality between the occupational compositions of Malay and Chinese men is due to differences in social origins while the remainder (57%) is due to differential transition rates of father-to-son mobility. The delta indexes between Malays and Indians and between Chinese and Indians are considerably smaller than the Malay-Chinese gap (24.6 and 31.6 to compared to 51.4). Sixty percent of the Malay-Indian difference is due to differential social origins, in contrast to 24 percent of the Chinese-Indian difference. (These figures summarize the patterns that can be seen from inspection of Table 4.1 and 4.4). Malays, and to a lesser extent Indians are less successful in achieving urban occupations than are Chinese, because they are more likely to come from agricultural origins and are less able to leave to enter other occupations as adults. Malays and to some extent Indians also seem less able than Chinese to pass on or inherit urban occupations from their fathers. Sales or craft occupations seem to be the most likely destination of socially mobile Chinese men while Malays and Indians are most often socially mobile downward into agriculture. This chapter has provided a description of ethnic patterns of mobility in the occupation structure. The succeeding chapters analyze the same question within the theoretical and methodological context of what has been called the status attainment process (Haller and Portes, 1973).

48

CHAPTER 5

THE SOCIOECONOMIC LIFE-CYCLE MODEL AND ETHNIC STRATIFICATION

What determines the ethnic differentials in socioeconomic attainment? To go further into this question, this chapter introduces a new strategy of analysis and then applies it in an examination of the ethnic variations in educational achievement. The following chapter will further extend this analysis to socioeconomic differentials in occupation and income. One might characterize this analysis as continuing the thrust of the traditional analysis of social mobility, but it reformulates the problem from one dealing with the bivariate association between fathers and sons occupation to a multivariate analysis of the determinants of the sons occupation, fathers occupation being but one of several independent variables.

The Socioeconomic Life-Cycle Model The theoretical perspective and techniques of analysis in this phase of the research can most aptly be called the Socioeconomic Life-Cycle Model (Duncan, 1967). In various other contexts, it has been referred to as the process of stratification (Duncan, 1968a), and the status attainment process (Sewell and Hauser, 1972; Haller and Portes, 1973). However named, it originated in the pathbreaking publication of Blau and Duncan (1967, especially chapter 5). In a sense, this is an extension of the father-son mobility analysis presented in the preceding chapter. However, attention is shifted from the mobility pattern to a statistical analysis of factors affecting socioeconomic achievement. For example, occupation-is posited as the dependent variable, and then the effects of certain background variables, one of which is fathers occupation are measured. This procedure allows for the construction of a causal model as simple or as complex as the data permit, with no basic change in the conceptual framework. It also allows for the use of sophisticated statistical techniques,
49

permitting a more powerful examination of theoretical differences than was possible with the conventional techniques. The basic assumption behind this model is that an individual moves through a sequence of socioeconomic positions, and that positions in later life are affected by earlier ones. The simplest version of this model identifies three stages: origin status, education, and adult status (Figure 5.1). Origin status, the position in the Figure 5.1: The Basic Model of the Socioeconomic Life-Cycle
Socioeconomic Achievement

Origin Status

Educational Attainment
socioeconomic hierarchy into which one is bom, is usually measured by fathers occupation, but other indicators, such as family income would be useful if data were available. The next stage, education, is seen as largely dependent upon origin status for economic support, parental encouragement, and other familial resources. In turn, education is usually considered both as an intervening variable and an important independent determinant of socioeconomic achievement. While education is generally thought most important in the imparting of greater skills or job qualifications, it may also contribute to further achievement to the extent that it increases contact with or visibility
to

potential employers.

This basic model can be expanded almost indefinitely by the introduction of additional variables. For example, income can be considered as another achievement variable, and residence, migration, mothers socioeconomic characteristics, ability or intelligence, and various psychological factors can be introduced as background variables (see Duncan, Feathermen, and Duncan, 1972 for an analysis of some of these topics).

A whole series of important questions taken from the literature on stratification can be empirically investigated in this manner. First, how rigid is the system of social stratification? How much difference do humble or wealthy origins make in socioeconomic achievement? By what mechanisms are advantaged positions passed on to succeeding generations? For instance, a successful father could pass his high status to his son by giving him a first-class education or alternatively, by hiring him in a high-status position in his own business or in some other firm or institution over which he has influence, regardless of his sons education. Although the correlation between fathers and sons occupation would be the same in both examples, the structure of stratification would be quite different.

In most societies, there are both rigidity (at various stages in the process) and possibilities for movement in the stratification system. While research in
50

recent years has begun to present empirical analysis of these patterns (Blau and Duncan, 1967; Feather-man, 1971a, 19710; Kelly and Perlman, 1971; Jones, 1971; and Kelley, 1973), it is probably still too early to pronounce a given level of mobility very high or low.

Applying the Model to Ethnic Stratification Although this model of the socioeconomic life-cycle has usually been applied to studies of stratification of the total population, it can also be applied to studies of the differential achievement of sub-groups, such as ethnic communities. It is then possible to measure the relative importance of ethnicity as a determinant of achievement as compared to other determinants, education and social origins. In other words, it can be used to discover if the differential distribution of origin characteristics among various ethnic groups accounts for their socioeconomic differences rather than being the effect of ethnicity itself. Generally, we think that ethnic groups which are socially and economically unequal must have different patterns of mobility. Duncan and Duncan (1968: 356) note that social investigators often assume that the mobility differentials produce the relative socioeconomic positions of minorities. However, this need not necessarily be the case in the short run. As has been noted (chapter 4), ethnic groups could have reached unequal levels of socioeconomic achievement simply as a result of the fact that they began life unequally. The disadvantage of certain ethnic groups may be one common to all poorer persons, irrespective of ethnic status; then a given ethnic group with a lower socioeconomic distribution in one generation may pass it on to the next generation by inheritance. This pattern could be described as the inheritance of poverty. From Markov chain analysis Lieberson and Fuguitt (1966) have shown that such a structure can not be maintained indefinitely; if different ethnic groups, initially unequal, experience the same mobility regime, then a similar distribution of status positions will emerge in several generations. The model of the socioeconomic life-cycle has been used to compare the process of stratification among the various minorities in American society (Blau and Duncan, 1967, chapter 6; Duncan and Duncan, 1968; Duncan, 1969; Featherman, 1971c). Although most American minority groups reach lower than average socioeconomic achievement there seems little evidence of a strong ethnic disadvantage beyond poor social origins, except among Black and Spanish-origin Americans. In other words, that persons in America from various European ethnic communities are more likely to be in lower-status occupations than the average is a disadvantage largely attributable to the poverty of their origins, not to any additional handicap they faced because of their ethnic status. However, Blacks and Spanish-origin Americans seem to face additional disadvantages which cannot be explained by the greater likelihood of their coming from more humble origins.
Culture and Discrimination as Explanations How can this additional disadvantage of certain ethnic groups be interpreted? Two major theoretical alternatives which are widely discussed in both popular and sociological circles are culture and discrimination. The cultural
51

thesis is that the ethnic groups each have their own traditions which offer more or less motivation to achievement. In the simplest form, this posits that certain ethnic groups emphasize values of thrift, hard work, and deferred gratification which gives then an advantage over other cultures whose value structure is more oriented towards sociability and leisure. These ideas have often been expressed in the American sociological literature under a general theory of "the need for achievement" (Rosen, 1959).

In Malaysia, the cultural differences between the Malay and Chinese community are often stressed by the man in the street and the social scientist alike. A recent book described these differences as follows: Malay values give the highest priority to getting along with others, and Malay social behavior is concerned with ways of showing mutual respect between persons according to a carefully calibrated scale of social status, with highest status given to a traditional hereditary ruling group. Chinese values are primarily oriented toward contributing to the success and prestige of the patrilineal family, with effective competition and skill at accumulating wealth receiving the greatest social rewards (Henderson, 1970:249). From this perspective, one would argue that even with equivalent socioeconomic backgrounds (same origin status and education), Malays would be less likely to achieve because they are less motivated. An alternative explanation of the same empirical finding (ethnicity has a net effect on achievement, independent of social origin) is that Malays encounter discrimination in Malaysian society. Discrimination can occur in a variety of institutional environments, such as schools, the job market, or economic institutions, and teachers, employers, and job supervisors may give preferential treatment to certain ethnic groups and not to others. It is pehaps easier to discriminate in certain employment markets where formal qualifications are not required and probably more difficult in educational institutions and certain occupations, such as the professions, where "paper qualifications" and other objective criteria are supposedly used. I have no direct way of distinguishing between these alternative explanations of any residual ethnic "effect" on achievement since the survey did not gather data on psychological orientation to work or the perception of discrimination (For some pioneering work, see Featherman, 1971c; and Duncan and Featherman, 1972.) However, will attempt to speculate on the relative merits of these arguments, basing my discussion upon the findings that emerge. A Model of the Socioeconomic Life-Cycle of Peninsular Malaysia In essence, am adapting to another society a model of the process of socioeconomic attainment developed in studies of stratification in the United States. It is necessary to maintain sufficient comparability for a cumulative research tradition to be enlarged, yet it is also important to include other variables
which might be relevant to the particular situation. Fortunately, the data (Family Survey) of this phase of the analysis were especially rich in the range of variables that could be included in the model of socioeconomic attainment (Figure 5.2). The variables are arranged in chronological order in terms of the life-cycle, with occasional exceptions. Thus each variable is assumed to have

52

Figure 5.2: SOCIOECONOMIC LIFE-CYCLE MODEL OF THE

PROCESS OF STRATIFICATION: PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

Fathers Occupation

Current
Residence

Occupation

Educational Medium

an effect (or influence) on all variables following it in the life cycle (moving from left to right in the diagram).

The great value of the socioeconomic life-cycle model is that it provides a logical rationale to order variables in a causal sequence, facilitating interpretation of the empirical analysis. The first three characteristics, Ethnicity, Fathers Occupation, and Birthplace, are all assumed to be fixed at birth and to remain constant throughout the life-cycle. It is possible to change ethnic status as a result of religious conversion (a Chinese or Indian who converts to Islam is often said to have become a Malay), tuit this is a rare occurrence. Thus there is no temporal variation among the three variables to suggest causal priority. For reasons to be explained later, do, however, order these variables in the subsequent statistical analysis of the determinants of socioeconomic attainment. The expected effects of Fathers Occupation and Birthplace upon later variables in the model are suggested by previous work in social stratification: men bom into urban families whose fathers are high in status enjoy more advantages and opportunities. The Family Survey asked the occupation of the father at the time when the son (husband of wife being interviewed) was twelve years old. This is about the age at which a youth would be completing primary schooling and perhaps entering secondary school-a critical stage in the socioeconomic life-cycle. The next two variables are number of Years of Schooling and the medium of instruction in the highest level of school attended (Educational Medium). Generally, it is to be expected that the higher the level of education, the greater the probability of increased socioeconomic achievement. English-medium schooling has reputedly played a key role in education for positions of high status in the professions as well as for work in the government bureaucracy. Current Residence in included as a variable to measure the

53

relative access to job opportunities. Most of the occupational positions of higher status are primarily found in cities, and there is a wide variation in the urban-rural distribution of each ethnic community.

It might be argued that Current Residence is prior to Occupation, or alternatively it might be that Occupation exerts the pull to move to current location. The relationship between residence or migration and the process of socioeconomic attainment is undoubtedly complex, and it has been simplified by an assumption which seems to be the most reasonable. Occupation and Income are taken as the key dependent variables representing socioeconomic achievement in the contemporary Malaysian stratification system. An overview of ethnic variation among the variables in this model (Table 5.1), shows the percentage distributions of all variables in the total population and each ethnic group. The distributions of Occupation and Fathers Occupation are the same
Table 5.1:
Socioeconomic Characteristics of Married Men, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

Percentage Distribution
Total Pop.
Fathers Occupation* Prof. and Admin. Clerical Sales Service Craft and Production

Malay
3.1% 1.2 3.9 1.8
3.4 1.7
1.1

Chinese

Indian

4.0% 2.3 8.2

2.2

6.5% 4.1 22.0 2.0 9.0

3.7 8.3 26.5 18.0

4.2% 4.9 7.7 5.3

Process Transport and

Communication Laborer

5.6 2.3 3.4 58.9 13.1 74.2% 12.8

11.5 1.5

12.4
3.2 8.3 41.0 13.0 60.8% 16.4 19.4 3.4 14.6% 19.8 23.1 11.6 13.1 7.7 4.9 2.9 2.2

Agricultural Not Reported

Place of Birth Rural Small Town Town or City

72.0 11.7 89.2% 6.4 4.2 0.2

25.6% 14.2 25.7 22.1 4.4 2.8 1.5 1.7 2.0

34.9%
31.4

Not Reported Years of Schooling

0 1-3 4-5 6 7-8 9-10

29.1 4.6
5.8% 24.1 16.6

12 or more

Not Reported
54

20.3% 16.9 23.2 20.2 6.0 5.1 2.3 2.9 3.1

19.5
7.4 10.5 3.4 6.4 6.4

Medium of Education English Other or Not Reported

9.5% 90.5 71.8% 14.8 13.4

6.1% 93.9 85.9% 9.3 4.8 6.3% 2.8 3.9 6.4

4.5
5.2 4.3 66.0 0.6

12.5% 87.5 32.1% 31.4 36.5 9.1% 7.2 24.5 4.7

19.1

22.7% 77.3

Current Residence
Rural

Non-Metro Urban
Metropolitan

62.9% 16.7 20.4

4.4% 6.7 5.3 5.0 12.5

Husbands Occupation Prof. and Admin.

Clerical

6.8%
4.2 8.4 5.8

Sales
Service

Craft and Production

Processes

8.4

Transport and
Communication Laborer Agricultural Not Reported

6.1 6.4 53.3 0.6

1.2% 28.4 24.9 15.6 9.8 8.9 5.9 1.9
1.3 2.2

7.5 10.9 16.3 0.6

9.0 11.8 45.2 0.1 0.6% 7.9 35.6 21.5 14.4 8.1
7.2 1.9 1.8 1.0

Monthly Income No Income

$1-49

50-99 100-149 150-199 200-299 300-499 500-749

$750 or more

Not Reported
Table 3.2.

1.6% 40.4 27.1 12.1 6.2 6.1 3.9 1.0 0.3 1.2

0.6% 2.0 12.5 23.0 18.9 18.3 11.4 4.8 2.9 5.7

""Occupational category titles have been abbreviated; for complete listing, see

Source: 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey

as those presented in chapter 4. Place of Birth is classified into three categories plus a residual category of Not Reported". Almost nine out often Malay men in the sample were bom in rural areas, while 60 percent of the Indians, and

about a third of the Chinese were bom in rural areas.

Years of Schooling contains eight categories and the residual Not Reported category. Malays are somewhat more concentrated in the lower educational attainment categories than are Chinese or Indians. Under the variable, Educational Medium, the categories are English and Other Language or Not Reported, a category which includes those who have had no formal education as well as those educated in a non-English medium school. Other languages used
55

in the classroom of Malay sian schools were Malay, Chinese (usually Mandarin), and Tamil, the commonest language among Malaysian Indians. Only about one man out of ten in the total sample had an English-medium schooling, and Indians had the highest proportion in this category. If a man had part of his education in a vernacular schol and part in an English school, he was classified as having had an English-medium education. Current Residence is defined by the size of the place where the respondent lived at the time of the survey. Metropolitan includes the five largest cities of Peninsular Malaysia, all of which had populations of 75,000 or more according to the 1957 Census of Population. Non-metropolitan areas include smaller cities and towns whose population ranged from 7,760 to 74,999, and rural areas make up the rest of the country, specifically all places with less than 7,760 residents. As the figures show, Chinese are much more likely to live in metropolitan and non-metropolitan urban areas than are Indians and Malays.
Chinese men have higher monthly cash incomes on the average than either Indians or Malays, Income being measured as the total cash income received by the husband during the last month. At the time, in 1966-67, when these data were collected, about three Malaysian dollars were equal to one United States dollar ($3M $1 US). However, this rule of thumb no longer holds. Income, stated as a single figure, suggests a precise measure, but it is possible that cash income is not a complete measure of remuneration: in the subsistence sector, home-grown food and rent-free housing may be important additions, unmeasured because they do not enter the money economy. Even in cities, an employee may receive bonuses, special allowances for housing, and other subsidies not counted in his regular income.

Multiple Classification Analysis The basic statistical technique used here is multiple classification analysis (Andrews, et. al., 1967), a method which differs from usual regression techniques in that all independent variables are categorical rather than quantitative. These categorical variables (often called dummy variables) are coded in binary fashion where "1" indicates presence of a characteristic and "0" indicates absence. For example, the nominal variable of Ethnicity becomes four independent dummy variables: Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Ethnicity Not Reported. This last category just insures the inclusion of cases where data are missing fot a variable. In any regression equation this method will produce a statistical measure of effect or simply a regression coefficient of the dependent variable on each category of the independent variables. Because there are more coefficients than there are independent normal equations based upon the least-squares criterion (Melichar, 1965:374), it is necessary to add a constraint to each set of categories of an independent variable. This is usually done by constraining the "b" (regression coefficient) of one category of each set to zero by simply omitting it from the regression equation. For instance, in the regression equation of Income on all independent variables, one category each of the occupations, current residences, educational levels, educational media, birthplaces, fathers occupations, and ethnic groups is omitted. The set of regression coefficients which comes out of all this represents statistical measures of the effect of being within a category of a parti56

cular variable. However, the coefficients are not interpretable in isolation; the "effects" are deviations from the omitted category in the calculation. It is a fairly simple procedure (Melichar, 1965: 374-375) to transform all the coefficients, including those omitted, into deviations from the overall grand mean of the dependent variable. This allows for an interpretation of each coefficient as the net effect or deviation from the average value of the dependent variable (e.g.. Income) as a result of being in a particular category of an independent variable.

To handle independent variables in multiple classification analysis requires simply the coding of each category of all independent variables as dummy variables, including a missing data category, followed by ordinary leastsquares regression analysis, one category of each independent variable being always left out in the actual regression procedure. Then, by using Melichars procedure, all the unstandardized regression coefficients can be adjusted into deviations from the grand mean of the dependent variable, and in the same procedure, a coefficient may be recovered for the omitted category.
Dependent Variables In the model of the socioeconomic life-cycle here presented. Education, Occupation, and Income are treated as dependent variables. Under Education, there are two variables of interest: Years of Schooling, and the Attendance at English-Medium Schools. A variable in the original data tape, which coded education of the husband in single years of completed scholing, had a slightly different distribution and a different number of missing values from the variable Years of Schooling (Table 5.1), but used the variable Single Years of Schooling as a dependent variable for educational attainment, because it gives an exact value for each individual. In the regression analysis used a pairwise, present procedure which calculates the matrix of correlation coefficients (for input into the regression analysis), based upon the maximum number of observations between each pair of variables. Using Single Years of Schooling as a dependent variable resulted in missing data only for the dependent variable since all missing data categories of independent variables were simply coded as dummy variables. This means that almost all coefficients in the correlation matrix are estimated on the basis of 5457 observations, except those coefficients paired with educational attainment (Single Years of Completed Schooling) from which 255 weighted cases (actually 453 unweighted cases) were excluded.
Medium of Education, as a dependent variable, was coded as a dummy variable where 1" meant at least a portion of education in an English-medium school and "0" meant no formal schooling or education completely in nonEnglish medium schools. The grand mean of such a variable is the proportion of the total sample of husbands that had some English-medium education. An occasional problem in the use of a proportion as a dependent variable in regression analysis is that some predicted values will be outside the real limits (below 0.0 or above 1.0). As this seemed not to be a major problem in most equations, did not utilize Logit analysis or other techniques to deal with
it.

To treat occupation as a dependent variable required some adaption of the

57

original variable (occupation of husband) which was coded in a two-digit classification that ranged from 00 to 99 (Appendix B). The classification into eight major occupational categories (chapter 4) was derived by grouping occupations into meaningful units containing sufficient numbers and hierarchically arranged in rank order according to mean income and education of the incumbants (Table 3.2). The occupational-prestige and socioeconomic-status scales of occupations that have been used in studies of stratification in the U.S. (Duncan, 1961: 109-138; Hodge, Siegal, and Rossi, 1966: 322-334), did not seem suited to a society whose economic bases were quite different. Instead, coded each major occupation as a separate binary, dependent variable, resulting in eight dummy variables, each having as its mean, the proportion it contained of the total sample of married men. In percentage terms, this ranges from a low of 4.2 in clerical occupations to a high of 53.3 in agriculture. Using this procedure with eight separate dependent variables means that the influence of independent variables is measured as effects upon entry into that occupation in contrast to all other occupations.

Income is a simpler variable because, like education, it provides natural interval-scale measurement. Actually, Income was originally coded into nine categories ranging from zero income to $750 or more per month plus the residual category. Not Reported. In order to create an interval-scale measure of income, each observation was assigned the income represented by the midpoint of the appropriate category; for instance, a man whose income was between $150 and $199 was coded as $175. To those in the highest category, $750 or more, a value of $900 was assigned. Similar to the use of education as a dependent variable which also has missing values, a pairwise-present procedure was used so that correlation coefficients with Income as a variable were based on 118 fewer cases (unweighted 194 cases) than the total sample of 5457.
The Model as a Set of Equations To estimate the relationships in Figure 5.2, I did not use the technique of path analysis (Duncan, 1966a), but the logic of my use of multiple classification analysis is quite similar. Multiple classification analysis provides a suitable framework within which to deal with the problem of many categorical independent variables. It also requires no assumption of linear relationship between independent and dependent variables. One equation with all independent variables in the model would allow for the estimation of a net effect of each independent variable on the dependent variable. Such a simple equation, however, would not really provide a proper framework to analyze the theoretical model in Figure 5.2. am interested not only in the net effects ("direct effects", in path analysis terminology) but also the way in which certain background factors affect intermediate variables, which in turn affect the dependent variables. The usual procedure when multiple classification analysis is used is to estimate both gross and net effects and sometimes effects net of a key variable (Bumpass and Sweet, 1972). The gross effects are simply the coefficients resulting with only one independent variable in the model. Substantively, they are the differences in means of the dependent variable in each category of the independent variable. A net effect is the coefficient in an equation with several independent variables; it is interpreted in much the same way

58

as a partial regression coefficient when other variables are statistically controlled.

In the subsequent analysis, present a sequence of models or equations in which add one independent variable (set of categories) at a time until all background variables are included. This allows observation of how the gross effects of earlier variables are modified by each subsequent variable. The ordering of variables is crucial to any interpretation. Since ethnic differences are the primary focus of this study. Ethnicity is always the only variable in the intial model. The results of this first model show gross effects or the observed differences on any dependent variable between ethnic communities, then Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, Years of Schooling, Educational Medium, Current Residence, and Occupation are added in that order. The changes in the coefficients of Ethnicity from model to model show what ethnic differences would be if ethnic groups had the same distribution of social characteristics on the other variables in the model. For instance, part of the income gap between Malays and non-Malays is due to the fact that Malays are more likely to have been the sons of farmers and others of lower status than non-Malays. The ethnic coefficients in the second model (with only Ethnicity and Fathers Occupation in the model) show what would be the gap in Income between Malays and non-Malays if they had the same distribution of fathers occupations.
This logic of the procedure is continued throughout the analysis so that one
can observe what variables are most responsible for ethnic differentials.

Inas-

much as the basic order follows a rough chronological pattern, the set of models demonstrates not only the relative effects of both distant and proximate variables, but also how early influences are mediated by other events in the socioeconomic life-cycle. The most debatable point of the ordering of variables is perhaps that of Fathers Occupation and Birthplace. Although the present order allows Birthplace only to have an effect which is net of Fathers Occupation, this is not to suggest that there is any strong theoretical reason for this particular sequence.

Social Background and Education Table 5.2 shows the effects of social background on Years of Schooling in the left-hand panel and on the likelihood of an English-medium education in the right-hand panel. Each panel has three models which successively add Ethnicity, Fathers Occupation, and Birthplace. In the left panel all coefficients are expressed as deviations from the grand mean of 4.4 years of education.
The first model shows that Malays have an average of 0.5 of a year less schooling than the average of the total population, while Chinese have about 1.1 years more; that is, there is a gap of slightly over one and a half years between the average Chinese and Malay. One might ask how much of this ethnic gap is due to the fact that Chinese and Malays have an unequal distribution of origin statuses. For instance, Chinese are more likely to be sons of white-collar workers and others in occuThese are the seven variables used in predicting Income. Fewer variables are included in the models predicting the occupation and the education variables.

59

Table 5.2:

Effects* of Social Background of Married Men on the Number of Years of Schooling and the Probability of Having an English-Medium Education: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.

En g lish-Medliuim
Years ofSc;hioling Grand M:ean 4 .4YeaiS
Ethnicity
Sducatioln

Grand Mean Percent

(1) (2)
-3.4% -1.4% -1.7 3.0 10.0 13.2

9.5

(1)
-0.5 0.6

(2)
-0.2 0.6 0.3

(3)
-0.1 0.2 0.2

Malay
Chinese Indian

(3) 0.2% 6.0 8.9

Fathers Occupation Professional and Administrative Clerical Sales Service Craft and Production

3.3 3.4 1.3 1.6 0.9

1.4 -0.1 -0.6

2.9 2.9 1.0 1.2 0.7

1.1 -0.4 -0.5

30.8% 45.3 6.2 13.5 5.6

14.5 -1.8 -6.1

27.0% 39.9 3.5 9.5

3.2

Process Transport and

Communication Laborer

Agricultural Birthplace
Rural Smalltown Town or City

11.3 -4.7 -4.5

-3.8% 9.4 14.4

-0.3 0.9 1.2 4.2 14.3 16.7 3.5

R2

16.5

20.2

*The coefficients of the residual Not Reported categories of the independent variables have been omitted from this table.

Source: 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey.

pations high in status, while Malays are more likely to be sons of farmers. We can control statistically for this difference in background with Model 2, which shows that being the son of a professional or clerical worker adds about three years to ones education. Most other urban occupations add about a year. When Fathers Occupation is controlled, the ethnic differential narrows to 0.8 of a year of school. In the third model. Birthplace is added. Being bom in a small town adds 0.9 of a year of school while a town or city adds about 1.2 years. Some of the effects of Fathers Occupation are reduced in this model. Similarly, the ethnic differential is narrowed to about 0.3 of a year of school between
60

Malays and non-Malays. The inclusion of two variables reduced the ethnic differential between Malays and Chinese by 80%. Clearly, most of the educational gap is a result of the fact that each group begins life in unequal circumstances. There may be other aspects of unequal social origins (not measured here) which might reduce the gap even further. The probability of receiving an English-language education can be analyzed in a similar manner. The grand mean of this variable is 9.5 percent of the total sample. Chinese men were three percent more likely, and Malays three percent less likely to have attended an English-medium school, while Indians were 13 percent more likely. Addition of Fathers Occupation and Birthplace results in a major shift in the Malay and Chinese coefficients. The reason why Chnese are more likely to have attended English schools is that they enjoy an advantaged origin because of Fathers Occupation and Birthplace. Controlling for these variables shows that there is actually a net Chinese effect of minus almost six percent. Controlling for the relatively disadvantaged origins of Malays results in a slightly positive effect for their ethnic coefficient. Controlling for social background leaves Indians still with a net positive effect of nine percent for Ethnicity. Perhaps rural Indians (most likely bom on estates) had closer access to English-medium schools than did rural Malays. Also interesting is the extremely strong effect of being the son of a professional or clerical worker or of having been bom in an urban area on the changes of being educated in an English-medium school.

Basically, most of the ethnic differentials in education are a result of differential social background. Observers of Malaysian society have developed various cultural explanations of the supposedly inferior achievement of Malay students. T.H. Silcock (1963a: 26) had said: "Most of the Malays were peasants and fishermen. Their environment was not conducive to education and their culture did not induce them to want it." The latter half of this statement is certainly misleading. It does not appear that there is much residual educational differential between Malays and non-Malays to be explained by culture or anything else. If each ethnic community had the same distributions of Fathers Occupation and Birthplace, educational differentials would be substantially less.

61

CHAPTER 6

THE SOCIOECONOMIC LIFE CYCLE: THE PROCESS OF OCCUPATIONAL AND INCOME ATTAINMENT
This chapter will be focused on analysis of the relative effects of ethnicity and social background on income and occupational attainment, a much more complicated analysis than was called for when education was the dependent variable. First of all, the number of independent variables has been expanded. For the equation with Income as a dependent variable there are seven independent variables, as compared to three in the analysis of educational attainment. Since each category of the seven independent variables has a separate coefficient or effect, there are actually thirty-five measured determinants of income. For Occupation as the dependent variable, there are six independent variables or twenty-six categorical effects. Additionally, since each occupational category is treated as a separate dependent variable, there will actually be eight occupational attainment models, each with the full set of independent variables. Later, will complicate the analysis even further by testing the assumption of additivity by examining the possibility of interactions between Ethnicity and other social background variables in the process of status attainment. The question guiding the analysis is: What factors account for ethnic inequality in income and occupation in Peninsular Malaysia? In particular: Are these differences due to the unequal distribution of social background characteristics, or to some other factor associated with ethnicity?

Social Background and Income Although Occupation should follow next in chronological sequence, will begin with an analysis of the effects of social background on Income, which has only a single dependent variable, and will therefore be more simple and straightforward. Income refers to the monthly cash income of husbands married to women in the childbearing years. The grand mean of income of the sample
62

is $134 (Malaysian dollars) per month. As has been noted, each husband was assigned the mean of his income category.

Table 6.1 shows the sequence of seven cumulative models of the effects of social background on Income. The first model includes a single social background variable. Ethnicity, as an independent variable. The second model adds Fathers Occupation to Ethnicity as the independent variables in the regression equation. Each subsequent model adds successive variables in the socioeconomic life cycle until the seventh model, which includes all seven of the social background variables. The coefficients in the table are expressed as deviations from the grand mean, net of other variables in the model.

We begin with a comparison of the relative magnitude of the effects in the seventh or final model. Net ethnic differences are -$14 for Malays and +$34 for Chinese, a gap of $48. Many other factors loom much larger as direct determinants of income: the net effect of being the son of a professional is positive, $47; the net difference attributable to having been bom in a town or city rather than in a rural area is $28. There seems to be a consistent pattern in which higher education leads to increasingly higher income, especially after nine or ten years of schooling. To have passed the Lower Certificate of Education, which is the national examination on the completion of nine years of schooling (Form Three), is a minimal requirement for a number of jobs. English-medium education has a net additional effect of adding $63 to the average monthly income. One who lives in a metropolitan area receives $41 more than one living in a rural area. With the exception of a professional occupation, being a service worker has the highest net effect ($52) of any urban
career.

All these factors explain 51 percent of the variation (R2) of Income. This
can be compared with an R2 of 13 to 22 percent (depending on which age group is chosen) of the variation in income in the U.S. adult male population (Duncan, Featherman, Duncan, 1972: 40). Social background is found to exert a greater influence of upon Income in Malaysia than the United States-but this finding might be a result of using different variables. Each of the seven independent variables in Table 6.1 adds a statistically significant increment to the

proportion of variance explained. Table 6.1 also reveals how the observed ethnic differential is affected by other statuses in the socioeconomic life cycle. From the model of gross effects in the first column, the Chinese-Malay differential in income is found to be $133, but from the last column or final model, the gap is shown to have narrowed to $48. Almost two-thirds of the gross difference in income is due to differences in social background or compositional differences. Again, as in the case of education, it would be difficult to construct a strong theory of cultural
differences to account for ethnic differences in economic achievement, since most of the differential can be accounted for by unequal distribution of social background characteristics. Whether ethnic differences in motivation account for part or all of the residual ethnic difference is a question that cannot be directly addressed here.

What variables contribute most to a reduction in the ethnic differential as one moves from the first gross effects model to the final complete net effects

63

Table 6.1:

Seven Models of the Effects* of Social Background of Married Men on Monthly Income: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.
(1)
-37 96 26

Ethnicity

Malay
Chinese Indian

(2) -27
70 12

(3) -18 47 5

(4) -16 43

(5) -17 50 -5

(6) -12
34 -5

(7) -14
34 6

Fathers Occupation
Professional and Administrative Clerical Sales Service Craft and Production

158 150
51 53

141
125

38 34
21

83 62 22 14 13
47 -13

72 42 22 10 12

67 28 17 0
5

47 26 8 -11

Process Transport and Communication

Laborer

33

-3

Agricultural
Place of Birth Rural Small Town Town or City

75 -15 -32

61 -27 -25 -19 39 73

40 -13

-17
-11 22 43

-14
-10 18 38
-40 -27 -7 2 24 74 121 189

23 -9 -10

18
-1

-6
-6 9 22 -23 -15 -4 -2 7 48 88 124

-6
11 25

Years of Schooling
0 1-3 4-5 6 7-8 9-10 11 12 or more

-47 -33 -14 -3 34 112 180 234

-36 -22 -7 0 21 71 115

177
-7 69
-17 40 49

Medium of Education Other English

-9 84

-7 63
-10 21 31

Current Residence
Rural

Non-Metropolitan Urban Metropolitan

Husbands Occupation
Professional and Administrative Clerical

143 33

64

Sales Service Craft and Production

40 52

Process

8
-2 -29 -30 51.3

Transport and
Communication Laborer Agricultural

R2

13.5

24.0

27.3

40.7

42.5

44.3

*Effects are expressed as deviations from the grand mean of $134 (Malaysian Dollars). The coefficients of the residual Not Reported categories of the independent variables have been omitted from this table.

Source: 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey.

model? About 50% of the Malay disadvantage and 50% of the Chinese advantage in Income results from the unequal oTsu-ibution of Fathers Occupations and Birthplaces, as does also most of the Indian advantage. Comparing the ethnic coefficients in Model 4 with those in Model 3 will answer the question: How much of ethnic inequality in Income is due to unequal educational attainment which is not the result of unequal social origin? As noted in the preceding chapter, net educational differences are small after social origins are statistically held constant, so it is not surprising that these net educational differences are not a major cause of ethnic inequality in income. It is also interesting to note the sharp drop in several of the coefficients of Fathers Occupation from Model 3 to Model 4 and from Model 2 to Model 3. This pattern reflects the fact that much of the effect of high-status fathers is attributable to their having given their sons an above-average education. Model 5 shows that the addition of Educational Medium actually widens the net Chinese-Malay gap. This is not because English schooling does not boost achievement-it does-but rather that the net Malay-Chinese differential in English-medium education is not the cause of the Malay-Chinese income gap. Model 6 shoves that Chinese are more likely to live in urban areas (net of every preceding variable) than Malays and this accounts for another portion of the gap in income. Assortment by occupation after all other factors are controlled does not seem to reduce the gap any further. This may indicate that there is no widespread pattern of discrimination that makes the movement into an occupation a cause of ethnic differentials in income. The change from -$5 to +$6 for the effect on Income of the ethnic group, Indian, from Model 6 to Model 7 suggests that Indian men slightly underachieve in the occupational assortment process relative to their previous social background.

To summarize the analysis of the determinants of Income among Malaysian men as measured in Table 6.1: (1) The seven variables in the final model, accounting for 51 percent of the variance in Income, provide a rather powerful model by social science standards. (2) Although the net or direct effects of Ethnicity are not negligible (the Malay-Chinese differential of $48 is 36 per65

they are not much larger than most other coefficients in the complete model, and in several cases less than the effects of other variables. (3) Of the observed differential of $133 between Malays and Chinese (first model), almost two-thirds can be attributed to the differential distribution of social background characteristics, in particular. Fathers Occupation and Birthplace.
cent of the mean income of $134),

Consequently, conclude that most of the ethnic differential in income is due to the unequal distribution of rural agrarian backgrounds among Malay, Chinese, and Indian men. The residual ethnic differential may be consistent with either the cultural explanation or one in terms of discrimination; it is not possible to test the alternatives. Perhaps finer measurement of occupational categories would have reduced the remaining ethnic differential even further.
Social Background and Occupation Earlier data (Table 5.1) have shown that Malay men are more likely to be in agriculture than Chinese or Indians and less likely to be in most urban occupations than Chinese or Indians. Again the fundamental question is: Are ethnic differentials in each occupation due to differences in the distribution of social background characteristics, or to some unique ethnic effect?
The analysis of the process of occupational attainment is complicated by the fact that the eight occupational categories are each treated separately as a dependent variable. As discussed earlier, this list of occupations forms only an approximate social hierarchy; a numeric socioeconomic scale would not be justified. Consequently, coded each of the eight occupational groups separately as a dummy variable (1 for being in the given occupation, 0 if not in it). This method has the virtue of analyzing each occupational category as a single entity. The assumption of some dubious scalar relationship among occupations is not required. At the same time, however, all variation within each occupational category is lost. If had used a single numeric occupational scale, there might have been interpretable differentiation within professional, sales, or other major categories. In this analysis, all detailed occupational titles within the eight broad categories are coded alike. The same analytical procedures used before were repeated here for each of the eight occupations. Each of the six background variables (Ethnicity, Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, Years of Schooling, Educational Medium, and Current Residence) were entered sequentially in six cumulative models for each of the eight occupations. The full results are so detailed and complex that they threaten to overwhelm and confuse rather than to enlighten. (The complete results are presented in Appendix F, and only partial results are discussed in this chapter.) Table 6.2 shows the effect of Ethnicity upon the probability of engaging in any given Occupation. All of the eight Occupations listed down the left-hand column, with the three ethnic communities under each. The first column, the grand mean of the dependent variable, is simply the percentage of all employed husbands in each occupation. The next six columns show the effects of Ethnicity, expressed as deviations from the grand mean, in six models of the process of occupational attainment. The first model includes Ethnicity

66

only as an independent variable. Thus the effects are gross effects, representing differences as they exist in the population. The second model includes both Ethnicity and Fathers Occupation as independent variables in the regression equation. Here the ethnic effects are net of Fathers Occupation; they could be interpreted as the ethnic differences which would exist if all ethnic groups had the same distribution of fathers by occupation. Each successive model adds an additional independent variable, and the ethnic effects change accordingly. The ethnic effects in the sixth model show the net ethnic differences after all other variables are statistically controlled.
The amount of variance explained (R2) of each model is also shown. Generally, an increment of one percent of variance explained means that the added variable is statistically significant. Chinese are more likely than Malays or Indians to be in Professional and Administrative occupations (Model 1). However, the Malay-Chinese differential is reversed in Model 3 where Fathers Occupation and Birthplace are held constant. The Malay effect increases in a positive direction through Model 6, while the coefficients for Chinese, and especially Indians grow larger in a negative direction. This means that Malays are over-represented in terms of their social background characteristics in professional and administrative occupations, a finding which might be partially explained by the internal heterogeneity of this category, many Malay school teachers in rural areas being lumped together with non-Malay professionals and administrators in urban areas. The findings in this first panel of Table 6.2 cast doubt on any theories which posit either that Malays aspire less to professional careers or that they suffer from discrimination at the point of entry into professional careers (after controlling for differences in social background). The same basic patterns are evident in clerical occupations. Although Malays are less likely to be clerical workers, their disadvantage is entirely due to unfavorable social background factors, especially Fathers Occupation and Birthplace. The net coefficients (Model 6) give them a positive effect for Ethnicity while in the case of Chinese and Indians, it is negative. It might be noted that the final R2 for clerical occupations, 22.3 percent, is higher than that for any other occupation except agriculture. The increments of variance explained associated with Years of Schooling (16.6-8.3=8.3 percent) and 4.8 percent) suggest that, independent Educational Medium (21.4-16.6 of social origins, formal academic credentials are particularly important for entry into a clerical occupation. The significance of Ethnicity in both professional and clerical occupations as measured by R2 in the first model is negligible, compared with other social background characteristics.

The pattern in sales occupations is quite different. Here the gross Chinese effect is moderated, but it still remains quite large and positive after all background variables are controlled. Part of the Chinese advantage is due to a favorable distribution of Fathers Occupation (about 22 percent of their fathers are in Sales) and Current Residence. However, the Malay and Indian disadvantage in this sector does not seem to be much affected by any background variable. argued earlier (chapter 3) that part of the Chinese advantage in Sales

67

Table 6.2:

Effects of Ethnicity of Married Men on Occupational Attainment in Six Sequential and Cumulative Models of Social Background Variables in Eight Occupations: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.

Grand
Occupation
Professional and Administrative

Mean
1

Model2
2

6.8%
-0.4 0.3 0.9 1.29 1.2 1.3 2.3 0.5 -1.0 -1.6 -1.4 -1.7 -2.4 -3.5 -3.9 -4.5 -4.6 -4.6 0.3 4.5 13.1 13.1 13.2 5.1

Malay
Chinese Indian

R2
Clerical

4.2%
-1.4 -0.6 0.2 0.7 0.5 0.3 3.1 1.3 -1.1 -1.2 0.2 -1.1 2.5 1.2 0.5 -0.2 -1.6 -1.5 1.0 6.1 8.3 16.6 21.4 22.3

Malay
Chinese Indian

R2 Sales

8.4%
-4.5 -3.4 -3.4 -3.5 -3.4 -3.1 16.0 12.5 12.4 12.5 12.0 10.9 -3.1 -2.8 -2.8 -2.6 -2.1 -2.0 8.9 14.2 14.2 15.0 15.3 15.7 5.8% 0.5 1.0 1.2 1.3 1.3 2.2 -1.1 -1.9 -2.4 -2.8 -2.8 -5.7 -0.8 -2.0 -2.1 -2.1 -2.1 -2.0 0.1 3.0 3.1 4.8 4.8 7.6 8.4%

Malay
Chinese Indian

R2
Service

Malay
Chinese Indian

R2
Craft and Production

Process Malay
Chinese Indian

R2 Transport and
Communication Malay
Chinese Indian

-3.9 -3.2 -2.9 -2.9 -2.9 -2.1 10.7 8.5 8.4 8.5 5.8 9.3 4.1 2.4 2.0 1.8 2.1 1.9 8.3 8.5 9.2 9.2 10.8 4.8 6.1%

-0.9 -0.3

0.2

0.2

0.2

0.8

R2 Laborer Malay
Chinese

1.4 -0.1 -1.4 -1.6 -1.5 -3.3 2.0 2.2 2.2 2.1 2.2 2.9 2.8 0.4 0.2 2.5 2.5 4.0

6.5%
-2.2 -2.1 -2.0 -2.0 -1.9 -1.7 4.3 4.1 3.7 3.9 2.9 4.5

68

Indian

R2 Agricultural Malay
Chinese Indian

5.4 1.9 53.3%

4.9 3.3

4.9 3.4

4.9 4.0

5.2 4.1

5.1 4.3

R2

12.7 8.0 5.5 4.9 5.0 1.7 -36.9 -25.4 -18.6 -17.2 -18.2 -7.4 -8.1 -1.7 0.1 2.0 0.9 1.5 16.4 27.4 30.0 35.0 35.5 44.6

Effects are expressed as deviations from the percentage of the total sample in that occupation. Independent Variables in Sequential Models of Occupational Attainment.
Model Model Model Model Model
1: Ethnicity.

Fathers Occupation. Fathers Occupation, Birthplace Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, Years of Schooling. Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, Years of Schooling, Educational Medium. Model 6: Ethnicity, Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, Years of Schooling, Educational Medium, Current Residence.

2: 3: 4: 5:

Ethnicity, Ethnicity, Ethnicity, Ethnicity,

Source: 1966-1967 West Malaysian Family Survey.

and Craft occupations might be due to the higher proportion of Chinese proprietors who are able to employ workers in their small shops throughout the country. If so, it seems that discrimination is a more likely explanation than one based upon differential cultural orientation towards achievement. Although discrimination implies invidious behavior, it may be the result simply of a natural preference for hiring a nephew rather than a stranger who speaks a different tongue. But no matter what the motive, the result is that entry into Sales occupations is more dependent upon Ethnicity than upon other characteristics. Of the total 15.7 percent of variance explained in Sales occupations, 14.2 percent is already accumulated in Model 2 with only Ethnicity and Fathers Occupation as independent variables. As noted. Service occupations include a diverse lot with many police and military personnel among Malays, and many service workers in hotels, restaurants, and domestic employment among non-Malays. Malays have a positive gross effect while non-Malays have a negative effect in the first model, and this differential widens as other variables are controlled. Practically all the Chinese participation in this occupation can be accounted for by their favorable distributions by Current Residence (primarily urban) and by Fathers Occupation. The increments in variance explained in the case of Service occupations suggest that urban life is the primary determinant of entry, Birthplace and Current Residence being the most significant independent variables. The pattern of ethnic differences in Craft and Production Process occupations resembles that of Sales occupations. Chinese and to a lesser extent Indians have strong gross ethnic effects which remain strong though attenuated

69

after other variables are controlled. Both Fathers Occupation and Current Residence are also important to Chinese entering this occupation. But the strong net effects of Ethnicity which remain indicate ethnic selectivity into this occupation, independent of social background. The Malay pattern shows that pan of their low participation in this occupation is due to their earlier disadvantages in respect to Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, and Current Residence. However, the net Malay effect in the sixth model is negative, indicating that Malays probably have some disadvantage in entering this occupation even if they have equivalent social background. suspect that the predominance of small shops in the industrial sector, which are likely to be owned by nonMalays, retards the entry of Malays into Craft and Production Process occupations. Also similar to the pattern of Sales occupations, the proportion of variance explained in Craft and Production Process occupations is largely attributable to the first two variables, Ethnicity and Fathers Occupation: 8.3 percent of the total figure of 10.8 percent in Model 6. Transport and Communication occupations show a positive gross effect in the case of Chinese which quickly disappears as other variables are introduced. Here again, Chinese owe much of their participation to their favorable background in terms of Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, and Current Residence. Although Malays are less than proportionately represented in Transport and Communication occupations (Model 1), their net ethnic coefficient is positive (Model 6). Indians, on the other hand, are slightly over-represented in this occupation (positive gross effect in Model 1), and this is not moderated very much by controlling for social background. There is a long history of Indian labor in the government departments which constructed the rail, road, and telecommunication networks of Peninsular Malaysia (Kemial Singh Sandhu, 1969: 285), and perhaps this has resulted in the selectivity in hiring Indians, independent of social back-

ground.
Chinese and Indians are much more likely to be Laborers than are Malays and the differential is relatively unaffected by the introduction of other variables, although Current Residence has some impact. In this respect, the pattern of ethnic coefficients is similar to those in Sales, and Craft and Production Process occupations. However, the composition of this occupation is quite diverse, among others, it includes miners.

The pattern of ethnic coefficients in Agricultural occupations is very interesting. The gross ethnic differentials as measured in Model are quite large, in fact. Ethnicity as a single independent variable explains 16.4 percent of the variance. However, the successive addition of other social background variables in the socioeconomic life-cycle model results in a reduction of the direct effect of Ethnicity. In the complete model (Model 6) the net effects of being Malay and Indian are only slightly positive, while being Chinese has only a moderate negative effect (7.4). Most of the substantial differences in the proportion of each ethnic group in agriculture are due to social background characteristics which are independent of Ethnicity.
Conclusions Two different patterns of occupational recruitment in the non-agricultural sector emerge from this analysis. First, in a number of occupations (Profes-

70

sional, Clerical, and partially for Service and Transport and Communication occupations) the advantage of non-Malays seems to be based upon an unequal distribution of background variables. In these occupations being a Malay often has a positive net effect (Model 6), though it is generally small. In other words, Malay men would be somewhat more likely than non-Malays to be in these occupations if all ethnic communities had equivalent distributions of social background characteristics. With these findings it is difficult to entertain either the cultural thesis that Malays are less ambitious than non-Malays or that they face discrimination at the point of entry into these occupations. There is a different pattern of status attainment evident in Sales occupations, and among Craftsmen and Laborers. Here there is a strong gross differential (Model 1) between Malays and non-Malays. Although the ethnic differentials are somewhat narrowed-Fathers Occupation and Current Residence were generally most important-the remaining differences arc still wide in Model 6 after all background factors are controlled. Clearly there is ethnic selectivity into these occupations. think that the hypothesis of discrimination is more credible here than the cultural hypothesis that Malays are less motivated.
These occupations predominate in commerce and manufacturing, where the small family-managed shop is quite common. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the structure of job-creation and hiring in such industries favors ethnic groups which contain large numbers of owners or managers in small businesses. Since it appears that non-Malays constitute the majority of the employers, an ethnic selectivity in hiring Chinese or Indians is a not unanticipated empirical finding. To salvage the cultural explanation as the reason for the lower net Malay coefficients in Sales, Craft, and Laborer occupations, it would be necessary to construct a theory that Malay men are ambitious to engage in some urban careers but not in others. While this may be possible it is not very convincing. In the four occupations where Malays have a net positive effect (Professional, Clerical, Service, and Transport and Communication) the government plays a major role in job creation, whereas in Sales, Craft, and Laborer occupations the private sector is dominant. Perhaps the fact that the government usually must rely more on formal qualifications gives it a more universalistic basis for hiring. It should also be noted that the Malaysian government follows a system in which Malays are given preference. While paper qualifications, such as education, must be considered first, Malays may be given preference among equally qualified applicants. The opposite process may be at work in the private sector.
Extensions of the Model The analyses of chapter 5 and 6 have been based on the multivariate regression procedure of multiple classification analysis. It has made possible an eight-variable analysis (in the case of income as a dependent variable)-a feat that would have been simply in the realm of imagination, had tabular analysis remained the technique of investigation. Because most of the variables have been categorical rather than quantitative, the use of conventional regressional analysis would not have been warranted. The use of multiple classification analysis has required no assumptions regarding the scale of measurement of independent variables nor the degree of linearity of relationships between

71

independent and dependent variables. The price exacted for all these advantages lies in the great mass of coefficients and results requiring substantive interpretation. The one equation predicting income with seven independent variables (Model 7 in Table 6.1) has 35 substantive categories, each of which has a net effect or regression coefficient on income-omitting the categories of some independent variables which include no answer, which also produced coefficients (not reported here). The analysis has become even more cumbersome with the series of sequential models or equations that shows the cumulative and mediating effect of social background variables upon ethnic inequality. The volume of coefficients for the analysis of the determinants of occupational attainment, separately for eight separate occupations, becomes so great that only partial results are presented in Table 6.2, the balance being reported in Appendix F. One might wonder with all this richness of detail in the analysis why should seek to expand and complicate the present model of ethnic stratification. However, there remains the question, both statistical and theoretical, whether interactions exist among the variables in this analysis.

Our model so far as made the assumption of additivity, which simply means that the effect of an independent variable upon a dependent variable is similar across categories of another variable. This assumption is not justified when the joint occurrence of two variables (or certain values of two variables) produces a unique effect or interaction not attributable to either variable in isolation. For instance, our additive model assumes that being the son of a farmer has a similar effect upon status attainment in each of several ethnic communities. Our estimate of the ethnic effect in the preceding analysis is supposedly constant across all categories of all other independent variables.

In most research where interactions are thought likely, it is possible to add an interaction term to the regression equation and examine its statistical significance and explanatory power. The task is not quite so straightforward, however, when as many as thirty-five additive independent variables are already in the model. The potential number of potential interaction terms is finite, but larger than most research workers would care to consider. First-order interaction effects are potentially important, but probably second- and third-order interaction effects also come to mind. Is the effect of being the son of sales worker in an urban area the same on a youth with only a primary school education as it is on a secondary school graduate? The list of theoretically interesting and potentially significant interaction effects could go on for many pages. Clearly one must have some a priori guide to the selection of interaction terms for testing.
will examine here only two of the possible first-order interaction terms of Ethnicity with other independent variables, specifically the Ethnic X Fathers Occupation and Ethnic X Years of Schooling interaction terms on status attainment. (For additional analysis of other ethnic-social background interaction see Appendix G.) The choice of Ethnic interaction terms with Fathers Occupation and Years of Schooling was dictated for several reasons. First, Ethnic interactions require attention because Ethnicity is the theoretically most significant variable in the analysis. The primary objective of this research is to explain ethnic dif-

72

Table 6.3:

Comparison of Variance Explained in Additive Models of Educational, Occupational and Income Attainment of Married Men, and Models with Additional Ethnic X Fathers Occupation Interaction Terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.

R2 with Eight R2 with Eight Variance Explained (R2) in Complete Additional Malay Additional Chinese Additive Model X Fathers Occu- X Fathers OccuNo.1 R2 pation Interactions pation Interactions
(1)
Dependent
Variables Years of Schooling English Education Professional and Administrative Clerical

R2 with Eight Increment to R2 and Additional Indian No. of Independent X Fathers OccuVariables No.1 pation Interactions (5)-(1)

(2)

(3)2

(4)2

(5)2

(6)

(7)

16.88 20.16 13.22 22.32 15.69 7.63 10.84 4.03 4.33 44.56 51.1

14 14
25 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 33

17.71 20.68

18.04 21.93

18.66 22.43
14.19 23.49 16.25 8.60

1.88
2.27

38 38 49 49 49 49
49 49 49 49 57

Sales Service Craft and Production Process Trans. and Comm.

13.69 22.46 16.08 8.27 11.62 4.23 4.74 44.77 51.34

13.82 22.80 16.17 8.46 11.90

4.38 5.24 45.04

0.97
1.17 0.56 0.17
1. 14 0.55 0.95 0.51 0.61

Laborer Agricultural

Income

51.56

11.98 4.58 5.28 45.07 52.72

No. in column 2 is the number of independent variables in the complete additive model.
No. in column 7 is the number of independent variables in the equation with all additive terms plus 24 interaction terms.

^he models with interaction terms in columns 3, 4, and 5 are cumulative.

ferentials in the stratification system, and it is significant if certain social background variables operate differently in some ethnic groups to produce differences in socioeconomic attainment. Fathers Occupation and Years of Schooling were chosen because they are generally the most powerful determinants of status attainment among the social background variables. Our method of analysis is to compare the variance explained in the complete additive models of all social background variables with regression models which include interaction terms in addition to the basic set of additive terms. The interaction terms were created by multiplying each ethnic variable by each category of the other social background variable. In the case of Ethnic X Fathers Occupation interactions, eight interaction terms were created by multiplying the variable "Malay" by each of the Fathers Occupation categories, similarly eight Chinese, and eight Indian X Fathers Occupation interaction terms. Thus a total of 24 Ethnic X Fathers Occupation interaction
variables was created.

The results of a comparison of such interaction models with the simple additive model are shown in Table 6.3. The first column shows the variance explained in the complete additive model, the third column shows the variance explained by a model which includes eight additional interaction terms for Malay men. The fourth column presents the cumulative effect of eight more Chinese X Fathers Occupation terms, and the fifth column is based upon a model with all additive terms plus 24 Ethnic X Fathers Occupational interactions. The sixth column shows the net variance explained by interaction terms (column 5 minus column 1). As can be seen from these results, the additional variance explained is small compared to the large number of itneraction terms introduced. For the dependent variables, Years of Schooling and English Education, the number of additional interaction variables is larger than in the original additive equations. The 1.9 percent added to the variance explained of Years of Schooling and the 2.3 percent to that of English-medium Education, are rather small figures, although they are statistically significant increments to R2. interpret this to mean that Fathers Occupation is an advantage or handicap that is not quite identical across all ethnic groups, but certainly the differences are not large enough to change the general pattern that was evident in the additive model.

For the dependent variables of Occupational and Income attainment, the increment to variance explained is less than one percent in all cases except for Clerical and Craft occupations, again, not enough to warrant reconsideration of the previous analysis based upon the assumption of additivity.
Table 6.4 presents similar results following an examination of the relative significance of Ethnicity X Years of Schooling interactions in the process of occupational and income attainment. Once again, the introduction of interaction terms does not add much to the explanatory power over the additive models. For each equation of status attainment (eight separate occupations, plus one for income), twenty-four interaction terms were added in three sequential and cumulative models. First, eight Malay X Years of Schooling interactions were added (column 3), then eight more interaction terms of Chinese X Years of Schooling were added (column 4), and finally eight more Indian

74

Table 6.4:

Comparison of Variance Explained in Additive Models of Occupational and Income Attainment of Married Men, and Models with Additional Ethnic X Years of Schooling Interaction Terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967.
Variance Explained R2 with Eight R2 with Eight R2 in Qamplete Additional Malay Additional Chinese Addition.al Model X Years of X Years of

R2 with Eight Increment to R2 and Additional Indian No. of Inclependent X Years of Vansibles
Schooling
Interactions

Schooling
R2 (1)

Schooling
Interactions

No.1 (2)

Interactions

(3)2

(4)2

(5)2

(5)-(1) (6)

No.
(7)

Dependent
Variables Professional and
Admin. Clerical Sales Service Craft and Production

13.22 22.32 15.96 7.63 10.84 4.03 4.33 44.56 51.11

25 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 34

14.01 22.57 16.20 8.33

11.37

14.08 23.26 16.68 8.48

12.20 4.56 6.60 45.47 51.72

14.34 23.75 16.73 8.64

1.12 1.43 1.04 1.01 1.45 0.59 2.36 0.97 1.79

49 49 49 49
49 49 49 49

Process
Trans. and Comm. Laborer Agricultural

Income

4.48 5.87 45.20 51.45

12.29 4.62 6.69 45.53 52.90

57

No. in column 2
action terms.

is the number of independent variables in the complete additive model. No. in column 7 is the number of independent variables in the equation with all additive terms plus 24 inter-

^he models with interaction terms in columns 3, 4, and 5 are cumulative.

X Years of Schooling variables (column 5). The addition of these 24 interaction terms doubled the number of independent variables in the regression equation, but seemed to raise R2 by only one or one-and-a-half percent in most occupational attainment models. In the equation for the occupational category, Laborer, the R2 did rise significantly, the increment being 2.36 percent; inspection of the coefficients reveals that lower educational categories are negatively associated with entry in this occupation among Malays while among Chinese they had a positive effect. While these figures suggest that ethnic interactions are not completely negligible, it does not appear that further elaboration of the model would dramatically increase the predictive power of the additive model. Further research should undoubtedly delve deeper into the specification of significant interactions; I think, however, that the additive model is a fairly accurate representation of the status attainment process in Peninsular Malaysia.

76

CHAPTER 7

DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

What is the magnitude of ethnic inequality in Malaysia?

How has it changed over time? How much of the ethnic differentials in socioeconomic levels can be accounted for by differences in social origins? These are some of the questions that have guided the analysis in this study. shall begin by summarizing some of the answers to these questions and other findings of this research. In the first chapter, the problems of formulating an adequate sociological theory of race and ethnic relations were discussed. While sociologists have made much progress over the past decades, we are still far from reaching a consensus on an overall theory. This is perhaps not surprising, since explanations of the course of race and ethnic relations in various societies involve the processes of social change in local economic, political, familial and other social institutions. To conclude that we know relatively little about the determinants of race and ethnic relations is to say that we know very little about the causes of social change in general.

However, some basic theoretical questions, more limited in scope, can generate testable hypotheses to guide research. These questions can be found under the rubric of ethnic stratification; more specifically: What factors and historical circumstances have led to the emergence of ethnic differentiation and inequality in any society; and what factors have maintained or reduced inequality over time? introduce this research as a case study, analyzing in one society the patterns of socioeconomic inequality over time (structural assimilation) and also examining the relative importance of several factors that might influence the socioeconomic differences among ethnic communities
77

(using the socioeconomic life cycle model). While this study is of only one society, its findings might generate a framework for the comparative research essential for the formulation of a meaningful general theory of race and ethnic
relations.

The task of chapter 2 is to describe the dimensions of ethnic differentiation and inequality in Peninsular Malaysian society and to introduce the sources of data to document and investigate the structure of ethnic stratification. The unique historical circumstances of the origins of the plural society, a story in their own right, appear here in rather general terms so that readers unfamiliar with Malaysia might have some perspective.

Chapters 3 through 6 contain the important analytical substance of this study. Chapter 3 attempts to measure the trend in structural assimilation using occupational differentials, as the key indicator with data from several censuses and a survey from 1931 to 1967. Chapter 4 begins the analysis of the data from the 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey with an analysis of father-toson occupational mobility and ethnic variations in the process. In chapters 5 and 6 use the same source for a more comprehensive examination of the patterns of ethnic inequality in educational, occupational, and income attainment within the framework of the socioeconomic life-cycle model.
What conclusions emerge from this investigation? The longitudinal research gives evidence of several identical trends in the Malay, Chinese, and Indian occupational structures, although not always to the same degree in all occupations. The greatest similarity is the movement out of agricultural employment. This almost universal correlate of socioeconomic change seems to be present in all ethnic groups in Malaysia, even though a majority of employed Malay men are still in agricultural occupations. The increase in white-collar occupations is found in all ethnic communities, but the ethnic gap is still wide. There has been relatively little trend toward equality between Malays and non-Malays in several occupations, most notably in sales and crafts-a situation which might be due to the establishments involved, which are usually small, with non-Malay employers. There is a trend toward similarity in the occupational distributions of Malays and Chinese from 1931 to 1947, but the gap widens from 1947 and 1957. This might be due to a trend toward shared poverty during the Depression and, war years, when many marginal Chinese urban workers and tin miners became small farmers. However, the postwar era created new opportunities, and the Chinese occupational structure seemed to shift more than the other two during the years 1947 to 1957. Perhaps because of greater access to education and the urban milieu, Chinese had an advantage in the urban job market over Malays. The analysis of intergenerational occupational mobility shows some of the same trends: substantial occupational inheritance of all occupations in all ethnic groups but clear differences, as well. Chinese are more likely to follow in their fathers occupation in the non-agricultural sector and more able to escape an agricultural heritage. Malays are more concentrated in agricultural origins and less likely to leave the occupation. Indians are intermediate between the patterns of Chinese and Malays. By comparing indexes of dissimi-

78

larity from expected and observed occupational structures both within and across ethnic groups it was possible to estimate what proportion of ethnic differentials is due to social origins and what is due to differences in social mobility. From this analysis, it is clear that a considerable portion of ethnic inequality is due to the influence of unequal parental social position.

In chapters 5 and 6, analyzed the determinants of ethnic inequality by using a model of status attainment or socioeconomic life cycle. This method of analysis is an extension of the idea of father-to-son mobility which introduces a number of other social background variables in addition to fathers occupation. Multiple classification analysis and a sequential set of models which introduce one variable at a time made it possible to measure the relative impact of various factors of social background which contribute to ethnic inequality in educational attainment and income, and in the proportions attending English-medium schools, and in various occupations. Statistically controlling for social background reduces the ethnic gap (Malay-Chinese) in incomes by almost two-thirds and the educational gap by eighty percent. For both income and education the social background factors which account for most of the ethnic gap are Fathers Occupation and Birthplace. Effects of Years of Schooling and Occupation, net of other social background factors, seem not to have much effect on the inequality of income among ethnic groups. interpreted these patterns as indicating that ethnic inequality is basically due to an inheritance of poverty, or of rural agrarian origin, rather than any strong effect of ethnicity alone. Thus neither the theory of differential cultural motivations nor the explanation of discrimination by employers is the primary cause of income inequality. However, there seems to be evidence in the analysis of occupational attainment of discrimination or some other structural block preventing Malays from entering a few occupations, especially sales and craft and production process occupations. This finding is consistent with the earlier conclusion that there was little trend towards proportionate ethnic representation in these occupations as seen in the trend analysis in chapter 3. The important variables in predicting entry into sales and craft occupations are Ethnicity and Fathers Occupation, both of which, being ascriptive, tend to work to the disadvantage of Malays. Also evident from the trend analysis of chapter 3 is that neither sales nor craft occupations are growing very fast as a proportion of total employment. It is easier to keep traditional ascriptive rules regarding hiring new employees if the demand for labor is not expanding rapidly. Most notably in clerical, but also in professional occupations, gross ethnic differentials are largely due to the unfavorable social origin (Fathers Occupation) and Birthplace of Malays. In other words, Malays are more likely to get into these occupations if all social background variables are held constant. Having a favorable Fathers Occupation and Birthplace also aids in getting the quantity and kind of education which makes possible a professional
or clerical career.

Social Research and Social Policy One might ask whether any piece of social science research is useful as a strategy for social change or action enlightened by social science? James Coleman (1969: 326) has said: If any theory of social change is to justify its existence, it must contain

79

within it some point or points at which knowledge can affect action, which in turn affects the course of social change. While have not attempted to develop a complete or even partial theory of social change here, think certain aspects of the preceding analysis might give rise to considerations of planned social change. am not at all sure that the accuracy of the data, or the completeness of the theoretical models justify any actions or policies based upon them, but since others may use this research as a base, offer my thoughts on the matter.

There are two basic ways to intervene in an opportunity structure: by changing either the rules of recruitment or the characteristics of applicants. To change the rules of recruitment simply calls for adjusting the criteria used by supervisors or employers in hiring or promoting. This can most clearly follow from changes in administrative policies (either public or private) which govern the selection of persons in and into certain positions in the major socioeconomic institutions. One might think that these criteria must be explicitly ethnic in order to promote ethnic differentials. This need not be the case; if ethnic groups differ in their educational distribution, selection based on education will produce ethnic differentials in socioeconomic attainment. If good jobs are available only in the cities, then rural-urban differences in residence among ethnic groups will cause ethnic differentials in occupation. Changes in criteria of selection often come about in the job market, independent of any administrative decision. If there is an over-supply of willing applicants for jobs, employers can become more selective by upgrading the prerequisite qualifications. Changes in the structure of the economy could also lead to differing criteria for selection. For instance, as economic units grow larger and more bureaucratic, they may become more universalistic in their hiring patterns, avoiding the kin recruitment which is probably common among small establishments. Such changes in the job market, planned or otherwise, might have a significant impact on ethnic inequality. The other social strategy to deal with ethnic disparities is to change the characteristics of disadvantaged groups so that they may compete more successfully in the existing opportunity structure. This type of policy can be seen most clearly in the expansion of educational opportunities, job training programs, and the like, for less successful ethnic groups. The hoped-for goal of such remedial programs would be to equalize social backgrounds or levels of skill between ethnic groups so that socioeconomic achievement would have no association with ethnicity. It will be seen that these social policies or strategies are related to the differential causes suggested by various hypotheses related to the socioeconomic life cycle model. If an ethnic group is disadvantaged merely because of its inheritance of poverty or rural agrarian origins, then either a change in the social composition of its background characteristics or an indirect strategy to change non-ethnic criteria of selection into positions would eliminate socioeconomic differentials. However, it might not be as simple as that. Equalizing everyones social background characteristics is by necessity an intergenerational process. It would be very difficult to change the educational or residential composition of adults above the age of 30; only those who are young

80

enough to be still in educational institutions would be likely to enjoy the benefits of such policy changes. How is it possible to change the social status of family of origin, or birthplace? Obviously, it cannot be done directly, but the handicaps can be reduced by building schools in rural areas, eliminating the costs of education to children and their families, and creating job opportunities outside of cities. In a sense these policies are changing the criteria for admission into educational and occupational structures. The distinction between changing the social background characteristics of the disadvantaged and changing the criteria of selection other than those of ethnicity would undoubtedly be obscured in the application of social policy. What are the policy alternatives if the fact of ethnicity plays a significant causal role in determining status attainment, independent of social background characteristics? Here the interventions must be related to the reasons why ethnicity is important. If one accepts the cultural hypothesis that certain ethnic groups are less successful because they are less motivated and ambitious-a hypothesis which seems to have little support from this research-then one must adopt policies that will change their values and aspirations. This topic, modernity, as a socio-psychological attribute, has generated a great deal of attention in recent years, though more in relation to socioeconomic development than as a cause of ethnic inequality. However, since doubt its importance as an important variable in this study on both theoretical and empirical grounds, will not discuss its possible implications as a basis of policy. On the other hand, what if ethnicity is a direct cause of inequality because of discrimination or ethnic preference in the allocation of opportunities? Here no amount of equalization of skills or qualifications would.remove the barriers. I suspect that this is the situation in the case of sales and craft occupations in Peninsular Malaysia. Of course, a direct policy of quotas to assure ethnic proportions in various industries and businesses would obviously minimize the differentials. The costs, however, of such a large-scale program might be substantial. It is probably inevitable that such policies will create ethnic antagonism, especially from the relatively more advantaged group who sees in them
a threat to their and their childrens chances of socioeconomic achievement. Of course, a policy of ending ethnic selectivity that inhibits structural assimilation need not institute a policy of reverse-selectivity to achieve the desired goal. While this conceptual distinction is clear in the abstract, it may be very difficult if not impossible to incorporate in the actual administration of policy.

With this perspective on the relationship between the process of social stratification and social policy as well as the empirical findings of the study, what are the implications for ethnic relations in Peninsular Malaysia? First of all, it seems that for most socioeconomic statuses (education, income, professional, clerical, service, and transport and communication occupations), there is little net ethnic effect, compared to the overall gross ethnic differentials. Thus policies to eliminate the association of disadvantaged social origins and socioeconomic attainment in all communities would go far to reduce the existing ethnic differentials in socioeconomic status. These policies could be of a sort that would equalize social background characteristics or they could change non-ethnic criteria of admission into the opportunity structure.

81

In some occupations, most noticeably in sales and crafts, direct efforts must be made to eliminate ethnicity as a criterion governing selection. This could be done by creating more jobs in economic institutions that do not recruit on ethnic grounds. suspect that larger and more bureaucratic firms or organizations would rely less on ascriptive characteristics such as ethnicity. It should also be noted that movement towards elimination of ethnic differentials in occupations would be much easier and more rapid in a labor market where there were a greater supply of jobs relative to demand. This would encourage a flexibility in hiring practices not possible where employers, having large numbers of qualified applicants to choose from, can base choice upon ascriptive characteristics. To point to the present high unemployment rates in Peninsular Malaysia is to single out the difficulty in introducing policies that would eliminate ethnic inequality. suspect that more than any other single policy, the creation of more jobs would alleviate the ethnic disparities in the occupational structure.

The Comparative Study of Ethnic Stratification The most valuable contribution of this study may be the directions which it suggests the comparative study of race and ethnic relations might take. Many significant theoretical developments in social science must await the testing of very simple hypotheses on a number of populations. But the field of race and ethnic relations is one that has long been dominated by global generalizations based upon case studies or speculative thought. Also the emphasis on cognitive attributes, difficult to measure, has impeded the tradition of cumulative empirical research. Here the objective has been to measure empirically the association of ethnic status and the distribution of statuses and rewards in society, to examine trends over time, and to investigate how a limited set of social background variables could account for ethnic differentials in the distribution of statuses. While this is certainly not inclusive of all that needs to be investigated, it does facilitate dealing with a number of important theoretical questions. For instance, a long-standing issue is the role of social change in the structuring of race and ethnic relations. Park and Frazier suggest that there is an inevitable process of the evolution of race relations, presumably related to forces of modernization, that will break down traditional ethnic barriers and lead to eventual integration and assimilation. Other authors, including Blumar(1965) and van den Berghe (1967), have been skeptical that the forces of social change will necessarily lead to any reduction in the level of inter-ethnic inequality or antagonism. To the handling of this complex hypothesis with its many related issues think the analysis of structural assimilation in chapter 3 gives some direction. Using longitudinal data it is possible to measure trends in ethnic inequality along various socioeconomic dimensions. Of course, the case study of one society is only a beginning of the comparative research that must be done. Trends in ethnic differentials in a number of societies should be examined in light of other social changes, such as economic growth and urbanization. The method used in chapters 5 and 6 of applying the socioeconomic lifecycle model to the study of ethnic inequalities in status attainment is also a straightforward means of investigating significant questions in the field. The
82

usual assumption of most social observers and social scientists is that if there are significant differences in the socioeconomic composition of racial and ethnic groups, then the explanation must have something directly to do with ethnicity per se. The suggestion is that the ethnic groups differ in some inherent attribute, such as cultural values, or else that they are treated differently by gatekeepers in the social structure, i.e, that there is discrimination. The explanation not usually considered is simply that the disadvantaged status of parents is passed on to their offspring, consequently lowering their socioeconomic attainment. This may play an important role in accounting for interethnic inequality, at least in the short run. There may, too, be different explanations in different sectors of the socioeconomic structure. For instance, research reported earlier shows that ethnicity may have a significant net effect on entry into several occupations, but not into others, nor on education or income. This is a rather unexpected complication, but it clearly shows that what causes inequalities in one part of the stratification system need not necessarily be a cause in another part. It is obvious that if, for theory-building, we are to know the role of ethnicity and race in the process of stratification, we must have more comparative research.

83

APPENDIX A

PROBLEMS OF COMPARABILITY IN MEASURING OCCUPATIONAL TRENDS

In this, as in every study that uses data from different sources, there arise problems of comparability. In chapter 3, the analysis is based upon time-series data from three censuses taken between 1931 and 1957 and a large national probability sample survey of households taken in 1967-68.
There are two basic issues, one regarding differences in the definition and coverage of the population classified by occupation, and the other the consistency of occupational classifications over time. The comparability of the base population may be affected by the completeness of coverage of the sources of data as well as by the changing definitions of the employed population. The 1931, 1947, and 1957 censuses purported to be complete counts of the population, but there was undoubtedly some underenumeration, of whose magnitude we have no accurate estimate. One analysis of the 1957 Census estimated the underenumeration at 2.7 percent (United Nations, 1962). The Socioeconomic Sample Survey of Households of 1967-68 introduces additional problems of coverage. Because it was limited to households, the institutional population was not included. The institutional population consists usualy of only a few persons (about 3 percent of the total population in 1957, Fell, 1960: 163), for the most part very old or very young, and thus not counted in most occupational tabulations. The omission of one sizeable portion of the institutional population, may, however, have affected the occupational composition, namely, the military and police forces, most of whom live in barracks and are classified with the institutional population, resulting in an underrepresentation of service workers. And since a substantial majority of the armed forces and police are Malays, the 1967 data may be somewhat non-comparable in this regard.

84

Two other aspects may affect the comparability of the base population among the various sources: first, the definition of those who are to be classified by occupation, and, second, the variation in age boundaries. The 1967 survey used the contemporary concept of the labor force, while the 1957 census used a very close approximation, "economically active population", while the 1947 and 1931 censuses used the concept of the "gainful worker". These three concepts differ in the way they classify those who are employed (and thus have an occupation) and those who are not. The "labor force" concept includes both the employed and the unemployed, but excludes those who are classified as out of the labor force. According to the "labor force" concept an employed person is one who works for pay at any time during the preceding week, one who has a job but is temporarily absent, or an unpaid helper who assisted in the operation of an economic activity,usually in a family enterprise, at least one day during the preceding week. The "economically active population concept is basically the same except that instead of covering the preceding week, employment is defined as being "gainfully occupied" for at least four of the preceding twelve months. To be unemployed in 1967 and "not working, but looking for work" in 1957 mean basically the same, except that reference periods are the past week and past year, respectively. Most of my trend analysis of occupational patterns is based upon percentage distributions with the base being the total employed population. These figures seem to be roughly comparable between 1957 and 1967. Perhaps the "gainful worker" concept is best described in the instructions given to the census enumerators. The 1947 census (Del Tufo, 1949: 98) issued the following instructions for collecting data on occupation: Enter the gainful occupation at which the person spends most of his time and from which he receives the greater part of his income When these instructions, which refer to no period of time, are followed, some persons who were classified as having an occupation in the 1931 and 1947 censuses might be classified as "out of the labor force", as currently defined. However, there was a residual category, "Nil", which include all those having "no gainful occupation", and which is roughly comparable to "out of the labor force". It seems that while there are some inconsistencies, one can reasonably Sexpect the concepts of "total gainful employed" in 1931 and 1947 to be comparable to the employed population of 1957 and 1967. There is also a problem with the varying age boundaries of the population classified by occupation in the published tables. The 1967 survey includes only those between 15 and 64 years old; the 1957 census includes only those above the age of 10; and the 1947 and L93J, censuses specifying no age range, presumably include all with a job, regardless of age. Thus the actual numbers from the various sources are not really adequate to measure trends in the occupational structure. It would be difficult to separate real secular changes in the occupational composition from those resulting from changes in age boundaries. However, think the use of percentages of the occupation distribution (based upon the total employed population) minimizes the influence of changing age boundaries. In Table A.I, whose data come from the 1957 Census (the only source which gave the appropriate data), comparisons can be made between the percentage distributions of the occupational structure of the em85

Table A-1:

Comparison of the Occupational Composition of Employed Males, Age 10 and Above, and of Employed Males, Age 15 to 64, by.Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1957.

OCCUPATION*
Malay
Professional and Technical Workers Administrative, Executive and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Craftsmen, Production Process Workers, and Laborers Transport and Communication Workers Miners Agricultural Workers

AGE 15-64 AGE 10 AND ABOVE number percent number percent

20,517

2.72%

20,230 4,145 16,091 20,312 65,514

2,84%
0.58 2,25 2,85 9.20

4,254
16,245 21,403

0.56
2.15 2.83 8.73

65,862
69,141

9.16
3.66 0.04 69.77 0.34 100.0 %

67,403 27,373 325 488,369 2,290 712,052

9.46
3.84 0.04 68.58 0.32 100.0 %

27,640
327 526,323

Not Reported
Total Employed

2,573
754,285

Chinese Professional and Technical Workers Administrative, Executive and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Craftsmen, Production Process Workers, and Laborers Transport and Communication Workers Miners Agricultural Workers

16,108

2.81%

15,697

2.90%
2.67 4.61

14,956 25,323 110,562 33,545 157,313 26,387 1,353 184,937 2,430 572,914

2.61 4.42 19.29 5.85

27.45

14,443 24,895 105,059 31,495

19.46 5.83
28.04 4.83 0.24 30.97 0.41 100.0 %

151,367
26,075 1,308 167,187 2,257 539,783

Not Reported Total Employed

Indians Professional and Technical Workers Administrative, Executive and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers

4.60 0.23 32.28 0.42 100.0 %

5,961 2,993 11,924

2.63% 1.32 5.27

5,891 2,924 11,800

2,68%
1.33 5.38

86

Sales Workers Service Workers Craftsmen, Production Process Workers, and Laborers Transport and Communication Workers Miners Agricultural Workers

30,189 20,230
59,117

13.35 8.94 26.15 4.69 0.06 37.20 0.34 100.0%

29,025 19,660 58,191 10,497

155

13.23 8.96 26.53 4.78 0.07 36.67 0.32 100.0%

10,609
155

Not Reported Total Employed

84,092 771 226,041

80,439 720 219,302

*This is the same list of occupations as in Table 3.3, except that Laborers could not be separated from Craftsmen and Production Process Workers.

Source: Fell, 1960: 149-156.

ployed male population aged ten and above, and the employed male population from 15 to 64, by ethnic group. It seems that there are only minor differences between the two distributions. Although the very young and the very old have somewhat different occupational.structures from the total employed population, they are fairly small groups which do not exert a strong impact upon the overall occupational composition. So, in spite of problems arising from the definition of the reference population included in the occupational tables, it is possible to measure occupational trends without fear of noncomparability. A second major issue is the diverse classifications of occupations used in the various sources. A recent Directory of Occupational Classification Malaysia, which was based upon the latest international classification and published in 1968, was not used in either the 1966-67 West Malaysian Family Survey or the 1967-68 Socioeconomic Survey, both of which adopted the occupational classification of the 1957 Census. This classification scheme includes a three-digit code. At the one-digit level, it consists of ten major categories ranging from 0 to 9; at the two-digit level, it is a 99-category system ranging from 00 to 99; the three-digit level offers a further breakdown into more detailed occupational titles. The 1957 Census data published only the two-digit occupational data, while the 1967-68 Socioeconomic Survey used only the 70 most common titles of the two-digit codes and combined the smaller categories under them. The occupational classification schemes of the 1931 and 1947 Censuses are similar to each other but radically different from the 1957 classification. The 1947 classification consisted of 31 major groups and 183 detailed titles, and the 1931 occupational classification scheme had 32 major groups and 141 detailed titles. The major difference between the earlier (1931 and 1947) classifications and the later (1957) is that many of the categories in the earlier schemes were more akin to industrial than occupational categories. For instance, some of the major titles of the 1947 classification are "Makers of Bricks, Pottery and Glass, etc." and "Makers of Food, Drinks, and Tobacco". Under these and other major cate87

gories are managers, employers, skilled workers, and laborers; consequently to construct a category such as "managers", which takes persons from these and other groupings, calls for a great deal of rearranging.
When as a pan of this project, I attempted to construct comparable sets of occupational categories for all these sources, the major problem was the reconciling of the 1947 classification with that of the 1957. Naturally the goal was to make the earlier classification fit the more recent categories. The author of the 1957 census report, who also attempted this, remarked that the procedure failed completely, but that the reverse procedure-fitting the 1957 occupational data to that of 1947-was a partial success (Fell, 1960: 25). Not knowing all the potential sources of error, attempted to do the impossible by fitting the earlier classification system into the 1957 scheme. think the result was reasonably accurate at the one-digit level, which consisted of only ten major occupational groups. The comparability of the more detailed categories which constructed may be more questionable. In Appendix B, have listed the complete titles of the occupational groups from the 1957 classification at the two-digit level. Appendix C contains a matching of the major occupational categories of 1957 (except "Laborers" which was a detailed category in 1957) with the code numbers of comparable occupations from the 1947 and 1931 classifications.

88

APPENDIX B

1957 MALAYSIAN OCCUPATION CLASSIFICATION BY ONE- AND TWO-DIGIT LEVEL.

OneDigit
Level

Occupation Title

Professional, Technical, and Related Occupations. Architects, Surveyors, and Engineers

Chemists and Physical Scientists

Veterinary Surgeons, Biologists, and Related Scientists Physicians, Surgeons, Dentists, and Medical Specialists Nurses and Midwives Professional Medical Workers not elsewhere classified and Medical Technicians Teachers Priests, Kathis, Clergy etc., and Members of Religious Orders (other than teachers, doctors, etc.) Lawyers, Judges, and Magistrates Other Professional, Technical and Related Workers
Administrative, Executive, and Managerial Occupations (excluding those in agricultural and retail trade) Administrative and Executive Officers, Government
and Local Government Directors, Managers, and Proprietors Foreign Consuls, Diplomats, Commissioners and Related Workers

Clerical Occupations Clerical Occupations Stenographers, Typists, and Personal Secretaries Office Business Machine Operators Office boys Related Clerical Workers, not elsewhere classified

Sales and Related Occupations Proprietors and Managers, Retail Trade Insurance Agents, Brokers, and Auctioneers Commercial Travellers, Canvassers, and Manufacturers Representatives Salesmen and Shop Assistants Hawkers and Street Vendors Stall Holders
Sales Workers not elsewhere classified

Agricultural Occupations

Managers, Assistant Managers, and Conductors Rubber Tappers

Weeders

Harvesters, Pluckers, and Toddy Tappers Estate Agricultural Workers (excluding workers in
estate factories) Owners, Cultivators etc. on Small holdings and Market

Gardens

Forestry Occupations
Fishermen

Hunters, Trappers, and Game Wardens

Gardeners and Grass Cutters (excluding market gardeners)

Miners, Quarrymen, and Related Occupations Blasters, Drillers, and Shot firers
Mineral Treaters Dulang Washers

Dredgemasters Specialized Mine and Quarry Workers not elsewhere

classified

Transport and Communication Occupations

Deck Officers, Engineer Officers, and Pilots, Ship Deck and Engine-room Crew (ship) Aircraft Pilots, Navigators, and Flight Engineers Drivers and Firemen, Railway Engine Drivers, Road Transport Railway Guards Traffic Superintendents, Inspectors, Controllers, and Related Workers, Transport Telephone, Telegraph, and Related Telecommunication

Operators Postmen and Messengers

90

Other Workers in Transport and Communication (excluding Laborers) not elsewhere classified
7&8

69

Craftsmen, Production Process Workers, and Laborer Occupations Not Elsewhere Classified Spinners, Weavers, Dyers, and Related Workers Tailors, Dress Makers, and Related Workers
Shoe Makers and Shoe Repairers

70 71 72

Fumacemen, Blacksmiths, Moulders, and Related

Metal-Making Workers 73 Precision Instrument Makers, Business Machine Mechanics, Watchmakers, Jewellers, and Related Workers 74 Toolmakers, Machinists, Plumbers, Welders, Platers, and Related Workers 75 Electricians and Related Electrical Workers 76 Carpenters, Joiners, Cabinet Makers, and Related Wood and Cork Workers 77 Painters, Decorators etc. 78 Bricklayers, Plasterers, and Building, and Constructional Workers, not elsewhere classified 79 Compositors, Pressmen, Engravers, Book Binders, and Related Printing Workers 80 Potters, Kilnmen, Glass Blowers, and Related Workers 81 Craftsmen not elsewhere classified 82-84 Production Process Workers not elsewhere classified including Graders, Packers, etc. 85-86 Stationary Engine, Excavating and Lifting Equipment Operators, and Related Workers 87 Overseers, Kepalas, Mandores, and Foremen not elsewhere Classified 88 Laborers not elsewhere classified 89
9

Service, Sport, Entertainment, and Recreation Occupations Firemen (fire brigades). Policemen, Security Officers,
and Related Workers Workers in Domestic Service, Hospitals, Hotels,

90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Clubs, Restaurants, etc. Caretakers, Cleaners, and Related Workers Barbers, Hairdressers, Beauticians, and Related Workers Launderers, Dry Cleaners, Pressers Sports, Entertainment, Recreation, and Related Workers Photographers and Related Camera Operators Service Workers not elsewhere classified
Members of the Armed Forces Workers not Classifiable by Occupation

Source: Fell, 1960: 164-165.

91

APPENDIX C

COMPARABLE CATEGORIES FROM 1931, 1947 AND 1957 CENSUSES, BASED ON THE TEN MAJOR OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORIES OF THE 1957 CENSUS.
Professional, Technical, and Related Workers
139-152, 154, 155 28, 37, 109-121, 123, 124 II Administrative, Executive, and Managerial Workers (excluding those in agriculture and retail trade) 1957 1947 17,20,23,29,47,65, 80, 85,97, 101, 113, 121, 127, 128, 129, 153, 172, 175 131 13, 15, 20, 23, 36, 61, 64, 74, 89, 93, 99, 100, 122, 136
1957 1947 1931 0

III Clerical Workers 1957 2 1947 164, 165, 166 1931 131 IV Sales Workers 1957 3 1947 114-120, 122-126 1931 88, 90-92, 94-98 V Agricultural Workers
1957 1947 1931
4

1-3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11-16, 91 1-12

92

VI Miners, Quarrymen, and Related Workers

1957 1947 1931

5 18, 19, 21 14, 16

VII Transport and Communication Workers 1957 6 1947 93-96, 98-100, 102-112 1931 70-73, 75-87 VIII Craftsmen and Production Process Workers 1957 7, 8 (except 89) 1947 4, 7, 10, 22, 24-28, 30-46, 48-64, 66, 67, 69-79, 81-83, 86-90, 92, 167-170, 173, 177 1931 17-19, 21, 22, 24-27, 29-35, 38-51, 53-60,62, 65-69, 132, 133, 137

IX Laborers
1957 1947 1931

89 178
135

X Service Workers 1957 9 (except 99)

1947 1931 1957 1947 1931

68, 84, 130-132, 138, 156, 157, 163, 174, 176 52, 63, 101-103, 108, 125, 126, 130, 138
99

Not Classified by Occupation

171, 179
139

93

APPENDIX D

Table D.I:

Occupational Composition of Employed Males, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967
1931 Total
21,895

Occupation
Professional and Technical Workers Administrative, Executive and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Transport and Communication Workers Craftsmen and Production Process Workers Miners Laborers Agricultural Workers

Malay

Chinese

Indian

8,097 3,017 4,584 10,988 13,451

23,155 14,118 1,149 15,257 442,285 957 537,058

7,670

3,279
879 5,123 23,034 28,579

9,057 29,090 120,449 87,079 73,364

102,188 77,220 112,079 875,122 7,194 1,514,737

4,646 16,158 93,989 43,311

28,230
72,792 69,893 54,159 271,588

21,417 13,587 5,761 42,563 151,699 2,223 298,144

Not Reported
Total Employed

3,770 666,115

94

1947

Occupation
Professional and Technical Workers Administrative, Executive and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Transport and Communication Workers Craftsmen and Production Process Workers
Miners Laborers

Total

Malay
10,919

Chinese

Indian

27,693 13,762 35,656 135,795 94,618 66,267 129,647 31,024 57,061 870,123 1,561 ,463,207

9,451

4,684

3,559 7,037 17,850 26,200

7,315 20,208 95,145 42,376

22,997

1,418 5,841 21,777 24,010

16,648 20,574

25,657
26,535 4,206 18,131 503,021
484

Agricultural Workers Not Reported Total Employed

80,812 23,050 16,244 261,488

764 579,850

643,599

3,680 22,480 98,168 267 219,540

Occupation Professional and Technical Workers Administrative, Executive and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Transport and Communication Workers Craftsmen and Production Process Workers Miners Laborers Agricultural Workers

1957 Total
47,140

Malay
20,517

Chinese

Indian

16,108
14,956 25,323 110,562 33,545
26,387

5,961

24,033 56,980 164,292 145,346

65,767

4,254 16,245 21,403 65,862

27,640

2,993 11,924 30,189 20,230

10,609

Not Reported Total Employed

36,920 185,123 327 1,907 103,569 32,221 802,645 526,323 2,573 5,997

1,602,799 754,285

115,632 1,353 41,681 184,937 2,430 572,914

30,174
155 28,943 84,092 771

226,041

95

Occupation Professional and

Technical Workers Administrative, Executive and Managerial Workers Clerical Workers Sales Workers Service Workers Transport and Communication Workers Craftsmen and Production

1967 Total

Malay
40,282 7,817 25,313 34,795 46,273 37,503
55,070 3,170 68,609 473,718
132

Chinese

Indians

80,780
35,670 76,163 168,487 98,150 83,843 201,877 16,798 146,195 689,696 665 1,598,324

26,436
22,744

11,273 3,416 13,951 19,600 16,863

35.627
113,263 33,098

31,719 116,864 11,582 48,869 135,177 256 575,635

13,094
28,022 1,918 28,212 73,289
150

Process Workers
Miners Laborers

Agricultural Workers Not Reported Total Employed

792,682

209,788

Sources: Vlieland, 1932 252-324 Del Tufo, 1949 477-505 Fell, 1960 128-137 Choudhry, 1970 (Appendix) 62-67

96

Table E.I:

Indexes of Dissimilarity Between Occupational Distributions (Without Agriculture) of Employed Males, by Ethnic Community: Peninsular Malaysia, 1931, 1947, 1957, 1967

g
Z
1-1957 1-1967
pi

M-1931 M-1947 M-1957 M-1967 C-1931 C-1947 C-1957 C-1967 1931

1-1947

Malay Malay Malay Malay

1931 1947 1957 1967 1931 1947 1957 1967

0.0

11.16 18.89 15.87

32.28 36.08 33.66 33.87
25.65 18.50 24.11

0.0 15.52 15.33 27.48 29.58 29.55 28.14 22.23 12.10 22.25 16.96

0.0 15.87 34.49 37.36 35.00 35.26 28.08 18.18 24.76 20.73

0.0
30.60 32.1 30.86 29.13 0.0 19.86 23.33 23.91 32.28 22.82 20.63 26.59

Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese

0.0 13.43 14.86 38.97 27.10 20.01 26.03

0.0 7.36 41.52 28.39 17.77 24.07

0.0
42.00 28.45 18.83 21.97

Indian Indian Indian Indian

1931 1947 1957 1967

26.00 16.46 14.16

9.33

0.0 13.74 26.09

18.69

26.75

0.0 14.75 16.67

0.0 9.74

0.0

APPENDIX F

Six Sequential Models* of the Effects of Social Background on Occupational Attainment of Married Men, by Occupation: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967

*MODEL Model Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Model 5
Model 6

INDEPENDENT VARIABLES
Ethnicity Ethnicity and Fathers Occupation Ethnicity, Fathers Occupation, and Birthplace Ethnicity, Fathers Occupation, Birthplace and Years of Schooling Ethnicity, Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, Years of Schooling, and Educational Medium Ethnicity, Fathers Occupation, Birthplace, Years of Schooling, Educational Medium, and Current Residence

Effects are expressed as deviations from the percentage of the total sample in
each occupation.

Source: 1966-1967 West Malaysian Family Survey.

98

Table F.I
Independent Variables
Professional, Grand Mean

Dependent Variables 6.8% Clerical, Grand Mean

(5)
1.2
-1.4

4.2%

(1)

(2)
0.3 0.5 -3.5 3.5

(3)

(4)
1.2

(6)
1.3 -1.7 -4.6 1.6

(1)
-1.4

(2)
-0.6
1.3 1.2

(3)
0.2
-1.1

(4)
0.5
-1.2 -0.1

(5)
0.3 0.2 -1.6 -2.8

(6)
0.7 -1.1

Ethnicity Malay
Chinese Indian N.R.
Fathers Occupation Professional and Admin. Clerical Sales ServicCraft and Production

-0.4 2.3 -2.4

O.S
-1.0 -3.9 3.1

-1.6
-4.5 1.5

3.6

-4.6 1.5

3.1 2.5 -0.2

-0.2

0.5 -0.8

-2.2

-1.5 -2.4

21.2 10.4 1.6

5.3
5.5
3.6 -3.5

20.0 8.6 0.7 3.9 4.6 2.5

-4.4

13.0
1.1

12.7 0.5
-1.3 1.3

12.5 0.0
-1.5 1.1

8.5 24.4
1.7

-1.3 1.5 3.9 1.2 -2.5

-1.1 -0.1

1.5
3.1

6.6 21.5 0.2 -0.6 1.8 4.7 -2.9 -1.6 0.6 -2.0
4.1

0.7 14.6
-1.1

-1.6

-2.1

10.1 -1.0
-3.1

8.8
-1.5

-2.0 0.9 3.1 -1.3 -0.8 1.2

-1.2

-3.9

Process

3.9 1.0 -2.5

3.7 0.6
-2.3

0.7

0.1 0.0 -0.9 -0.1

Transport and
Communications Laborer

6.3 -1.6
-2.4

Agricultural

-2.6
-0.7

N.R. Birthplace
Rural Small Town

-2.0 -0.8
-1.3

-1.0
0.1
-0.4

-0.9 -0.1 -0.3 0.4

1.1

0.7

1.5 -1.3 -0.3 0.9 -0.8

1.3 3.9
1.4

0.6
-0.5
0.6

2.8
5.3 -0.4

Town

City

N.R. Years of Schooling

0 years 1-3 years
4-5 years

-0.4 0.9 1.6 0.4 -4.8

-3.4

0.8
1.5

2.3
5.0

0.4 -4.6
-3.2

0.0 -4.5
-3.1

8.3 0.9

1.3 -3.3 -2.8

-1.7

2.7 0.2
-1.4 -1.0

-1.7
-1.4 -0.2

6 years

7-8 years 11 years 12 N.R.

-3.0 -0.7 6.6

17.5

years

35.6 0.6

-2.8 -0.5 6.3 15.8 34.3 0.7 -0.2 2.3

-2.8 -0.6 6.2 15.6 34.1 0.4 -0.2

2.0

-0.2

-1.7 1.8 28.6 15.5 -1.0

-0.7 -0.5
15.4

-0.9
-0.7
14.9

5.6
-0.1 -2.0 18.7

4.6
-1.1

Educational Medium Other English

-1.8
17.4

Current Residence
Rural

-0.5

Non-Metro. Urban Metropolitan

2.0 0.3
4.5
5.1

-1.6 4.3
3.7

R2

13.1

13.1

0.3 13.2

1.0

6.1

8.3

16.6

21.4

23.3

99

Independent Variables
Sales, Grand Mean

(1)
Ethnicity Malay
Chinese
Indian

(2)
-3.4 12.5 -2.8
-4.1

(3)
-3.4
12.4

(4)
-3.5

Dependent Variables 8.4% Service, Grand Mean (1) (2) (5) (6) (3) (4)
-3.4 12.0 -2.1 -3.3 -3.1 10.9 -2.0
-2.9 0.5
-1.1

5.8% (5) (6)

1.3 -2.8
2.2

-4.5

1.0

16.0 -3.1

12.5
-2.6

N.R.
Fathers Occupation Professional and Admin. Clerical Sales Service Craft and Production

-3.8

-2.8 -4.0

-3.5

-0.8 -2.1

-1.9 -2.0
-1.4

1.2 -2.4 -2.1 -1.5

1.3

-2.8
-2.1 -1.1

-2.1
-1.1

-5.7 -2.0
-0.4

0.1

0.2
-2.5 21.5

1.1
-1.2

2.0

-2.7 21.4
-5.4 -4.1

-5.3 -4.0
3.0

21.3 -5.6 -4.4

0.3 21.3 -5.2 -4.3

3.4

1.5 -1.0

0.8
1.6

0.3
0.9

20.8 -6.0 -4.9

2.0

0.5 24.1

0.2
23.6

-1.4 -0.3 -0.6

-1.4 -0.3

-2.4 -3.0

22.5
-1.0

-0.6 22.5 -1.0 3.2 -0.4 -1.3

2.9

-1.6 20.6
-2.3

Process Transport and

Communication
Laborer

0.0
4.5 -0.1 -1.9 2.8

-0.3
4.1 -0.4 -1.7

Agricultural

3.0 -3.4 -2.6

1.5

2.8
-3.7 -2.7 1.7 -0.1

-3.4 -2.6
1.5

-3.7 -2.8
1.8

-3.2
-2.5

3.2 -0.4
-1.3

0.0
0.4 -0.6

N.R.
Birthplace
Rural
Small Town

1.5
0.1

2.8
-0.5 1.1 1.8 -0.7

2.9 -0.3 0.5 1.3 -1.0 -5.0

-2.3 1.5

2.1
0.4

Town
N.R.

City

0.0 0.4 -0.8 2.4

-0.2
1.0

0.6 -0.3
2.8 -1.0
-1.5

0.2
-1.0

0.1
2.8

-0.3 0.5 1.3

-1.0

1.7 -1.3
-1.6

-0.7 -1.2 -3.6

-4.4 -1.4 1.5

Years of Schooling
0 years 1-3 years
4-5 years

-1.6
-2.0

-5.0
-2.3

6 years 7-8 years 9-10 years 11 years 12 years

0.9 2.6
1.2

0.4
2.3 2.0

0.4
2.2

1.5
2.5 2.0

2.5
2.0 4.0 -0.3

2.2
1.4

2.1 -S.I
-7.6 -1.8

5.1 -3.5
-4.1

1.8 4.8
-4.1

4.0
-0.3

3.4
-1.4 1.4

N.R.
Educational Medium Other English

-2.1 0.7

-4.9 -3.0 0.8 -7.6 -1.5 4.6

2.7

3.6
4.8

3.6 4.8 0.0 0.0

2.6 0.3
-2.9

-6.5

Current Residence
Rural

-3.3

Non-Metro. Urban
Metropolitan

7.7
0.1

R2

8.9

14.2

14.2

15.0

15.3

15.7

3.0

3.1

4.8

4.8

9.4 7.1

100

Independent Variables

Dependent Variables Craft and Production Process, Transport and Communication, Grand Mean 6.1% Grand Mean 8.4%

(1)

(2)
-3.2

(3)
-2.9

(4)
-2.9 8.4 2.0
-5.4

(5)
-2.9 8.5 1.8 -5.4

(6)
-2.1

(I)
-0.9
1.4

(2)
-0.3 -0.1 2.2 -3.0

(3)
0.2
-1.4 2.0 -3.1

(4)
0.2 -1.6 2.2 -2.8

(5)
0.2
-1.5

(6)
0.8 -3.3
2.2

Ethnicity Malay
Chinese
Indian

-3.9
10.7
4.1

9.3
2.4

N.R.
Fathers Occupation
Professional and Admin. Clerical Sales Service Craft and Production

-6.9

-6.0

8.5 2.1 -6.2

5.8
1.9

-4.9

2.9 -3.6

2.1 -2.8

-2.3

2.7 -0.4 -1.6 -2.0 -2.1 -2.7 0.5

3.3

4.1
1.4

-1.7 -2.4

3.9 0.9 -1.7 -2.5 20.1 0.5 -2.5

-2.1

3.0
-1.4

-2.5 -4.2 18.8 -2.4

-1.9 -1.5

-2.7 1.7 3.9 1.7

1.1

-3.8 0.4 3.3 0.5 0.6 13.4 0.5

-3.1
1.3

-3.2
1.1

-3.9
-0.7 2.6 -0.8

3.3 0.4 0.4 13.5 0.1 -1.6

3.1 -1.2 4.4

3.3
0.4

Process Transport and

Communication Laborer

20.5
1.2 -1.7 -2.4

20.1
0.7

20.1 0.6 -2.5 -2.2

1.9

0.4
13.4

-0.5
11.3 0.7
-1.1

-2.1
-2.1 2.3

Agricultural N.R.

2.5

1.8

1.2
-0.3

14.3 1.5 -.9 3.1

-1.5
3.0
-1.1

0.1 -1.6 3.1

-1.2 4.3

2.6 -0.7 3.4 0.9 0.2 -0.6 0.9 0.8 1.2 -1.8

Birthplace
Rural Small Town Town City

-0.7 I.I
2.7

-0.9
1.4

-0.8
1.3

0.4
1.4

4.2
2.2

N.R.

2.6

3.7 1.8 -0.8 0.8 0.6 0.8

3.5

3.6
1.8 -0.7 0.9 0.7

-0.5
-0.1

2.6 1.6 1.9

-1.1

2.5
1.9

Years of Schooling
0 years
1-3 years 4-5 years

-1.0
0.3

6 years 7-8 years 9-10 years 11 years 12 years N.R.

Educational Medium Other

0.9

1.8 0.7 0.6

0.2 0.7
1.3 -1.3 1.8

0.8
1.4
-1.4

3.3 2.8

-5.0 -5.9 -6.4 -3.2 -4.6 -5.4 -9.6 -10.7 -12.7 5.2 5.1 3.2 -0.2
0.1 -0.7

-6.8 -3.3 -0.8

1.3 -7.5
-3.8 -0.7 -0.1

0.9
-8.2 -5.2 -2.2
0.1

English Current Residence

Rural

1.9

1.0

-0.9
-2.2 5.7
5.4

Non-Metro. Urban
Metropolitan

R8

4.8

8.3

8.5

9.2

9.2

-2.9 5.8 9.3 10.8

0.4

2.0

2.5

2.8

2.9

4.0

101

Independent Variables

Laborer, Grand Mean 6.5% (4) (3) (5) (6) (1) (2)
Ethnicity Malay
Chinese Indian

Dependent Variables Agricultural, Grand Mean 53.3% (3) (2) (4) (5) (6) (1)
4.9 5.0 5.5 12.7 8.0 2.9 -36.9 -25.4 -18.6 -17.2 -18.2 0.1 0.9 5.1 -8.1 -1.7 2.0 -4.4 18.7 15.9 17.1 17.3 17.7
-1.7 1.7

-2.2 4.5
5.4 -6.2

-2.1

4.3
4.9

-2.0 4.1

-2.0
3.9 4.9 -4.6

N.R.
Fathers Occupation Professional and Admin. Clerical Sales Service Craft and Production

-5.5

4.9 -5.4

-1.9 3.7 5.2

-4.5

-7.4
1.5

14.8

-4.3
-5.5 -3.4

-4.5 -5.5
-3.5

-2.9 -3.7

0.2
1.1

-0.1
-1.1

-3.1 0.4 -0.9 3.1

11.4 -0.4

-2.5 -2.9 -3.1

-2.7 -3.4

-3.3
0.1 -1.3 2.6 11.6
-0.3

0.6 -0.9 3.4

11.5

-26.8 -30.0 -24.6 -24.9

-21.6 -11.5

-9.7 -5.9 1.1 -22.8 -12.8 -9.4 -20.9 -17.2 -17.3 -13.5 -19.1 -14.3 -13.5 -6.4

Process

-25.0 -21.7 -19.0 -18.9 -13.7 -35.3 -30.9 -27.1 -25.8 -13.3 -7.2 -2.8 -4.6 -4.6 -7.7 10.4 10.0 7.1 14.4 12.1 -13.0 -12.3 -13.7 -13.5 -10.6

Transport

and

Communication Laborers Agricultural

N.R.
Birthplace
Rural Small Town

2.9 12.6 -0.3 2.2

2.8 12.2 -0.2

2.2

2.0 -0.4 2.4 0.0

1.3

-0.5 2.0
-0.5

1.9
-0.4

-0.2
2.0
-1.1

Town

City

N.R. Years of Schooling

0 years 1-3 years
4-5 years

1.1

2.6 0.2 1.2

-0.9

2.4 -0.4 0.6 -0.8

2.2

5.7 4.5 4.2 -15.3 -12.0 -11.3 -18.2 -13.7 -12.9 -12.6 -13.3 -13.4

1.6

-6.1
-3.3 -3.6

6 years 7.8 years 9-10 years 11 years 12 years

Educational Medium Other

-0.6 2.2 1.3 0.0 0.4 -3.9 -6.0 0.7

1.9

17.1 7.5
0.1 -5.9

15.9 6.4
-1.1

13.5
2.8
-1.1

1.0 -0.2
0.0
-2.4

1.0 -0.2 -0.1

-2.5

-6.7

-13.3 -11.6

-5.5 -9.4

-3.6 0.6
0.4 -3.4

-3.8 0.1
0.4

-23.4 -16.8 -14.5 -22.1 -12.0 -7.7 0.1 -7.7 -8.4 1.5 -14.3 0.4 -3.4

English

-4.2 -0.8 0.9

3.1

Current Residence Rural Non-Metro. Urban Metropolitan R2

1.9

3.3

3.4

4.0

4.1

4.3

16.4

27.4

30.0

35.0

12.8 -31.5 -33.5 35.5 44.6

102

Table G.I:

Comparison of Variance Explained in Additive Models of Educational, Occupational and Income Attainment of Married Men, and Models With Additional Ethnic X Birthplace Interaction Terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967 R2 with Three Variance Explained R2 with Three R2 with Three Increment to R2 and Additional Additional (R2) in Complete Chinese X Additional Indian No. of Independent Additive Model Malay X Variables X Birthplace Birthplace Birthplace No. Interactions (5)-(1) Interactions No.1 Interactions R2 (7) (5)2 (6) (4)2 (3)2 (2) (1)

Dependent Variable Years of Schooling English Education Professional and

Admin. Clerical Sales Service Craft and Production

16.88 20.16
13.22 22.33 15.69 7.63 10.84 4.03 4.33 44.56 51.11

14 14

17.32 20.35
13.23 22.37 15.84 7.90

17.51 20.64

18.14 20.91 13.44 22.69 16.12 8.08

1.26 0.75
0.22 0.36 0.43 0.45

23 23

25 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 33

13.28 22.55 15.88 8.05

10.99 4.27 4.59 4.59 51.44

34 34 34 34 34 34 34 34 42

Process Trans. and Comm.

Laborer

Agricultural

Income

10.90 4.26 4.39 4.39 51.35

11.00
4.42 4.60 45.04 52.87

0.16 0.39 0.27 0.48 1.76

is the number of independent variables in the complete additive model. No. in column 7 is the number of independent variables in the equation with all additive terms plus 9 interaction terms. ^he models with interaction terms in columns 3, 4, and 5 are cumulative.

No. in column 2

Table G.2:

Comparison of Variance Explained in Additive Models of Occupational and Income Attainment of Married Men, and Models with Additional Ethnic X English Education Interaction Terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967
Variance Explained R2 with Additional R2 with Additional (R)2 in Complete Malay X English Chinese X English Additive Model Education Education R2 No. Interactions Interactions

R2 with Additional Increment to R2 and Indian X English No. of Independent

Education Interactions Variables

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(5)-(1) (6)

No. (7)

Dependent

Variables
Professional and
Admin. Clerical

Sales Service Craft and Production

13.22 22.33 15.69 7.63

25 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 33

13.22 22.33 15.83 7.63

13.23 22.82 16.07 7.64 11.28 4.31 4.41 44.94 51.16

13.24

22.93
16.07 7.71 11.29 4.34 4.43 44.96 51.63

0.22 0.60 0.38 0.08

28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 36

Process Trans. and Comm.

Laborer Agricultural

Income
See Notes

10.84 4.03 4.33 44.56 51.11

10.84 4.30 4.40 44.86 51.16

0.45 0.31 0.10 0.40 0.52

to Table G.I.

Table G.3:

Comparison of the Variance Explained in Additive Models of Occupational and Income Attainment of Married Men, and Models with Additional Ethnic X Current Residence Interaction Terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967
Variance Explained R2 with Additional R2 with Two Additional Chinese (R2) in Complete Malay X Additive Model X Residence Residence R2 No. Interactions Interactions

R2 with Two Increment to R2 and Additional Indian No. of Independent Variables X Residence No. Interactions (5)-(1)

(1)
Dependent Variable Professional and
Admin. Clerical

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

13.22 22.33

Sales Service Craft and Production

15.69
7.63

25 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 33

13.35 22.37 15.74 8.89

13.41 22.45 15.84 9.00

13.56 22 66 15.35 9.04

1.12

0.34 0.33 0.16 1.41

0.28 0.26 1.24 1.13 0.86

31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 39

Process Trans. and Comm.

Laborer

Agricultural

Income

10.84 4.03 4.33 44.56 51.1

10.90 4.19 4.68 45.18 51.14

11.04 4.23 5.57 45.65 51.27

4.29 5.57 45.69 51.97

See Notes on Table G.I.

Table G.4:

Comparison of Variance Explained in an Additive Model of Income Attainment of Married Men, and Models With Additional Ethnic X Sales Occupation and Ethnic X Agricultural Occupation Interaction Terms: Peninsular Malaysia, 1966-1967
Variance Explained R2 with Two R2 with Two (R2) in Complete Additional Malay Additional Chinese Additive Model X Occupation X Occupation R2 No. Interactions Interactions

R2 with Two Increment to R2 and Additional Indian No. of Independent X Occupation Variables Interactions No. (5)-(1)
(5)

(1)
Dependent
Variable

(2)

(3)

(4)

(6)

(7)

Income

51.1

33

51.52

51.60

52.61

1.50

39

See Notes to Table G.I.

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