Sabah Household Income — Median RM4,890, Poverty 17.7%
We are working through the statistics in this section against their original sources. The headline figures above were re-checked on 16 August 2026. Detailed figures further down the page have not yet been individually verified, and some may be out of date or wrong.
If you spot something that looks wrong, please tell us — it genuinely helps.
The typical Sabah household earns RM4,890 a month (2024), about 30% below the national median of RM7,017. The poverty rate is 17.7% — the highest of any Malaysian state — and inequality, measured by the gini coefficient at 0.405, is also the highest in the country. Within Sabah the gap is wide: Putatan households earn a median RM6,563 against RM2,785 in Pitas.
Every figure above is read straight from the Department of Statistics Malaysia open data service when this page is built — none of them is typed in by hand. Two are worked out rather than published directly: the state rank is Sabah's position when all 16 states are sorted by their published median income for 2024, and the comparison with the national median is the gap between Sabah's published figure and Malaysia's. Both use only published numbers and you can reproduce them from the sources listed at the bottom of this page.
Median income rose from RM3,745 in 2014 to RM4,890 in 2024, a 31% increase in nominal terms. The dip in 2020 is the pandemic. Note that DOSM revised its Poverty Line Income methodology in 2021, so figures either side of that break are not perfectly comparable, and the survey runs every two years rather than annually.
Source: DOSM Household Income Survey (hh_income_state), read 2024 series
Where Sabah sits
Sabah is among the lowest-income states in Malaysia. A median household income of RM4,890 a month is 30% below the national median of RM7,017, placing Sabah 14th of 16 states and federal territories. The mean is higher, at RM6,498, because a small number of high-earning households pull the average up — which is why the median is the better guide to what a typical family actually earns.
Two things make Sabah unusual rather than merely poor. The first is the poverty rate: at 17.7% it is the highest in Malaysia by a wide margin, and it has come down only modestly from 19.7% in 2022. The second is inequality. Sabah records the highest gini coefficient of any state at 0.405, meaning the distance between the best-off and worst-off households here is wider than anywhere else in the country. Low average income and high inequality together are what produce the district gaps below.
The gap between districts
Sabah is not one economy. Across the 28 districts with published figures, median household income ranges from RM6,563 in Putatan down to RM2,785 in Pitas — a 2.4-fold difference inside a single state. The districts around Kota Kinabalu sit at the top; the northern and interior districts sit at the bottom.
All 28 Sabah districts with a published figure, richest to poorest. Putatan tops the list at RM6,563; Pitas is lowest at RM2,785.
Source: DOSM Household Income & Expenditure Survey, district table (hies_district)
Poverty, and where it is concentrated
Sabah's poverty rate of 17.7% is the highest of the 16 states and federal territories, and it is not a marginal lead — Kelantan is next at 11.5%, so Sabah is 6.2 percentage points clear. Poverty here is strongly regional. In Pitas the rate is 50%, against 6.9% in Putatan.
Poverty in Sabah is concentrated in the northern and interior districts. The state-wide rate is 17.7%, so several districts sit at more than double the state average.
Source: DOSM Household Income & Expenditure Survey, district table (hies_district)
An earlier version of this page showed a household income decile breakdown (B40, M40, T20 bands), an urban-versus-rural income ratio, and a hardcore poverty figure. None of those had a source behind them, and the numbers did not match anything DOSM publishes. They have been removed rather than reworded. The district figures above cover much of the same ground and are real. If DOSM releases decile or urban-rural data for Sabah in a form this site can read, the breakdown will come back with a source attached.
Income against spending
Mean household expenditure in Sabah is RM3,547 a month, against mean household income of RM6,498. Both are averages pulled upward by higher earners, so the gap between them is not the spare cash a typical family has — the typical household earns the median RM4,890, which is 25% below the mean. For most households in the lower half of the distribution, income and essential spending are much closer together than these averages suggest.
Inequality
The gini coefficient measures how evenly income is spread: 0 would mean every household earns exactly the same, and 1 would mean a single household earns everything. Sabah records 0.405 for 2024, up from 0.395 in 2022, and that is the highest of all 16 states and federal territories.
This is the piece that is easy to miss. Sabah does not simply have low incomes — it has the widest spread of incomes in the country as well. A state can be poor and relatively equal, or rich and unequal. Sabah is at the difficult end of both measures at once, which is why a state-wide average tells you rather little about any particular household here.
Frequently asked questions
Q How does Sabah's household income compare with the rest of Malaysia?
Q What has happened to Sabah's median income since 2014?
Q How poor is Sabah compared with other Malaysian states?
Q Which Sabah districts are richest and poorest?
Q Is income inequality in Sabah high?
Q What does the average Sabah household spend each month?
Q Where do these numbers come from, and how current are they?
Sources & References 6 sources
Last verified: 16 August 2026
Government — DOSM (primary, machine-read)
- OpenDOSM — Household Income & Expenditure by State (hies_state) Median and mean income, poverty rate, gini and expenditure for all 16 states. Source of this page's headline figures.
- OpenDOSM — Household Income & Expenditure by District (hies_district) Median income and poverty rate for all 28 Sabah districts. Source of the district charts.
- OpenDOSM — Household Income by State (hh_income_state) Long-run median and mean income series. Source of the trend chart.
- OpenDOSM — Household Income, Malaysia (hh_income) National median and mean, used for the Sabah-versus-Malaysia comparison.