Background The rapid growth of economy and increasing cost of living in Malaysia have given significant impact especially to the lowest household income population. The main objective of this study was to determine risk factors for low quality of life (QOL) and poor health status of this population. Methods This was a cross sectional study design. A total of 347 respondents from low household income groups, including persons with disability and Orang Asli were recruited from E-kasih. A semi-guided self-administered questionnaire was used. QOL measured by EQ. 5D utility value and health status measured by visual analogue score (VAS). Descriptive statistic, bivariate Chi-square analysis and binary logistic regression were conducted to determine factors influencing low QOL and poor health status. Results Majority of the respondents were Malay, female (61%), 63% were married, 60% were employed and 46% with total household income of less than 1 thousand Ringgit Malaysia. 70% of them were not having any chronic medical problems. Factors that associated with low QOL were male, single, low household income, and present chronic medical illness, while poor health status associated with female, lower education level and present chronic medical illness. Logistic regression analysis has showed that determinants of low QOL was present chronic illness [AOR 4.15 95%CI (2.42, 7.13)], while determinants for poor health status were; female [AOR 1.94 95%CI (1.09,3.44)], lower education [AOR 3.07 95%CI (1.28,7.34)] and present chronic illness [AOR 2.53 95%CI (1.39,4.61)]. Conclusion Low socioeconomic population defined as low total household income in this study. Low QOL of this population determined by present chronic illness, while poor health status determined by gender, education level and chronic medical illness.

This study contributes in building emerging literature by investigating the impacts of global economic policy uncertainty on Malaysian sectoral stock performance. This study models sectoral stock returns as time‐varying transition probability Markovian processes and employs two‐stage Markov‐switching model for findings impacts of global economic policy uncertainty on sectoral stock returns in regime switching environment. The empirical results reveal that linear framework unable to detect the effects global economic policy uncertainty, and the Markov‐switching model exhibits significant effects of global economic policy uncertainty on all sectoral stock returns excluding technology sector in Malaysia stock market. The findings also expose that the effects of global economic policy uncertainty vary across regime states, sectors, and nature of effects, where the negative effects of global economic policy uncertainty dominate over positive effects. The global economic policy uncertainty exhibits greater impacts on stock returns in high‐volatility regime. Thus, the findings confirm the existence of asymmetric, nonlinear, nonmonotonic, and state‐dependent relationship between global economic policy uncertainty and sectoral stock returns in Malaysia. Therefore, the overall empirical findings can be applied in asset pricing and investment decision‐making purposes. The findings also suggest that global economic policy uncertainty can be a systemic risk factor and predictor of stock market returns.

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This study examines whether oil and gas risk factors are priced in the returns of Malaysian oil and gas stocks employing asset pricing model with improved version of Fama-MacBeth two-stage panel regression. The findings reveal that oil price risk, gas price risk, and exchange rate risk are priced factors in the returns of oil and gas stocks, alongside market-based risk factors. Oil price, gas price and exchange rate factors are found to be associated with positive risk premium implying that they are systematic risk factors in the Malaysian oil and gas industry. Investors demand compensation for exposure to changes in oil price, gas price and exchange rate, implying that the risk cannot be eliminated through diversification. The risk premium for common systematic risk factors such as market, book-to-market, and momentum factors are found to be negative. The results suggest that in the Malaysian oil and gas industry, momentum driven strategy produces negative returns and investors receive higher returns from investing in growth oriented oil and gas stocks. Our results offer implications for asset pricing and portfolio management.

This article examines the impacts of the geopolitical risk, global economic policy uncertainty, and oil price shocks on stock prices in Malaysia using factor augmented SVAR approach. The findings show that while geopolitical risk has no significant direct impacts on the overall stock market, its indirect impacts are significant and transmitted through the global economic policy uncertainty and oil shocks channels. Global economic policy uncertainty exerts negative effects on the overall stock market and its impacts are magnified by geopolitical risk. Oil related shocks exhibit asymmetric effects on both the aggregated and sectoral stock price. The impacts of oil demand shock on stock price are amplified by global economic uncertainty factor whereas oil supply shocks impacts are amplified by the geopolitical risk factor. At sectoral level, the impacts of all the global shocks vary across different sectors and time. The overall findings imply that global economic policy uncertainty and oil demand shock factors are systematic risk factors that can be employed to forecast stock market returns. The findings also provide implications for policymakers to regulate markets in maintaining financial stability and investors to react to future shocks in these global economic factors with regard to the risks and opportunities.