Household Accounting: A case study of Johor

Abstract

Household accounting is also known as the financial management of household income and consumption were given attention during this pandemic era. The reason is that the pattern of spending among households plays an important role in ensuring the financial stability and sustainability of households, especially during a crisis. During the inflation phenomenon, purchasing power decreases despite the increase or constant in the value of household income. A significant amount of the consumption among households is finances through debt. Malaysia’s household debt to GDP is among the highest in Asia that exceeded several high-income nations, including the United States and Japan. The household-to-GDP ratio was 86.9% in 2015 and increased to 87.5% as of June 2020. The increase especially during the contraction of nominal GDP and economic crisis because of the Covid-19 pandemic is indeed very alarming. Therefore, consumers need to keep track of their income and spending behavior to help them to become more resilient, despite the economic crisis. This study attempts to investigate the pattern of managing household accounting, specifically consumption and income among Johor citizens. For this study, the secondary data was collected through the Report of Statistics Department for the year 2019. Descriptive statistical analysis was carried out to investigate the patterns of consumption among three income groups: B40, M40, and T20. Consumptions were divided into 13 groups of necessities and non-necessities household expenses. The result showed that across the three groups, housing and utility expenses are the highest consumptions followed by food and non-alcoholic beverages. Group B40 is the lowest income group among the three consumed more than the other two groups for both types of expenses. One possible explanation could be this group has more members in the household as compared to the other two groups. However, a more detailed analysis of this fact should be carried out in the future to understand why it is so. This study is limited only to Johor state. A future in-depth study could widen the sample to the whole of Malaysia to better understand the general pattern of consumption of Malaysian households. By understanding the pattern of consumption, we could help the household to better manage their spending, prioritize their consumption, and hope to help them to save some for future use. Keywords: household, household accounting, income, consumption eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6i18.3081