New poverty figures were released yesterday and the picture they paint isn’t encouraging.
More than 1.37 million people were found to be living in poverty in Hong Kong last year — a nine-year high.
In Hong Kong, the poverty line is set at half the median monthly income of a household before taxation and government policy intervention like welfare payments and allowances for the elderly and low-income families.
In real terms, that means for a single-person household, this is HK$4,000 (US$511) per month; for two people, HK$9,000 (US$1,150); and for a three-person household, the poverty line is HK$15,000 (US$1,920).
According to the Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report 2017, about 1.377 million Hongkongers were living below the official poverty line. This means that about 20.1 percent of Hong Kong’s population are living on less than US$511 per month.
The 2016 report revealed that 1.352 million Hongkongers (about 19.9 percent) were living below the poverty line, meaning that for 2017, the number of people struggling to get by has reached a nine-year high.
The report found that even with government intervention, 17.5 percent of the city’s children are classed as living in poverty. This is up 0.3 percent from the previous year.
Meanwhile, the poverty rate for the elderly after government intervention fell by 1.1 percent to 30.5 percent, which was the same level as 2013.
At a press conference yesterday, Chief Secretary and Chairman of the Poverty Commission Matthew Cheung dismissed suggestions that the government weren’t doing enough, saying that “structural factors” such as ageing population, improving economy, and changing demographics contributed to the higher numbers, on.cc reports.
He also dismissed suggestions that the government’s poverty-alleviation measures have failed, saying that when you take the government’s cash handouts into account, the poverty rate fell to 14.7 percent, or 1.01 million people, which is just 1.4 percent higher than 2016.
Cheung also said that public rental housing is an important part of the government’s poverty-alleviation measures, and that they will continue efforts to increase public rental housing supply and take greater initiatives to make use of public housing resources more effective.
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