Household Composition and Interhousehold Exchange in Malaysia

The authors analyze survey data on informal transfers of money, goods, and help among Malaysian households in 1976-1977. The annual combined value of these transfers amounts to 86 percent of annual income for households earning less than M$1,500, and declines to only one percent for households earning more than M$30,000. Blockmodeling is used to group household members who are similar to each other in their transfer behavior. Both the quantity of transfers and the nature of these participant groupings are then compared across families with nuclear, laterally extended, and vertically extended structures, and across rural and urban households.