Poverty

The first fundamental key of understanding poverty is to define it and

explore the trends. In Hong Kong, We define poverty as living under a

monthly income less than or equal to half of the median income of all

other households of equal size. And do you know how many poor people are

there in Hong Kong? According to the Hong Kong Oxfam, in 2010, one in

every 10 households with at least one working member (10.2%) was living in

poverty. And the number of households of employed poor increased to a

record high of 192,500 from 2005 to 2010, despite the economic growth.

Other than that, the monthly median household income of the richest 10% is

27 times that of the poorest 10%. The Human Development Report released

by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2009, claims with

statistics that Hong Kong has the widest income gap among the world’s

wealthiest economies.

P2: So, what are the main causes that led Hong Kong's poverty problem to

become a growing community concern for decades? First and the most

important reason of all, the economic transformation. Since the 1980s,

Hong Kong has been transformed from a manufacturing economy to a service

economy. Such transformation has changed the knowledge and skill

requirements of the labour force. Manufacturing workers unable to cope

with this change are being displaced. The economic transformation has been

one of the contributing factors to the displacement of over half a million

of manufacturing workers since the 1980s. Experienced manufacturing

workers who shift to service jobs generally receive less income because

their previous experiences are usually not relevant to their new posts.

Despite from that, the transformation of the economic structure of Hong

Kong has also brought about income disparity between workers at the lower

and upper segments of the occupational hierarchy. The rising demand for

better educated and higher-skill workers pushes up their salary level. On

the...