The new census data showing the continued growth of income inequality comes as no surprise. Hong Kong is heading for the Latin American level of inequality, rather than that of recently developed East Asia or old Europe - or even the US.
But the data does contain a few clues as to what might be done to reverse the trend. By that, I do not mean more hand wringing by officials, leading to committee recommendations, which are intended to be a sop to the community rather than a way of addressing the issue.
First, the facts. The numbers in the top three and bottom three income brackets have soared since 1995, with the biggest rises being in those over HK$40,000 a month and under HK$4,000. The international standard measure of income inequality, the Gini co-efficient - in which 0 is perfect equality and 1 is total inequality - has risen to 0.533, from 0.518, from 1996 to last year.
Second, let us dispense with the excuses. It is true that there has been a global trend in the developed world towards increased inequality. But to blame, as the government is attempting to, the increasing dominance of service industries over goods-producing ones makes little sense. That is especially the case if one compares Hong Kong with, for example, other service-centred economies such as Britain and the US.
Let us also recognise that the data actually understates income inequality by not taking into account the fact that the top 15 per cent of households have access to domestic helpers, who are paid a fraction of the median wage, and in many cases far less than the supposed minimum for helpers. Indeed, this access to cheap foreign labour is one reason for the increase in household inequality: many middle-class families have two full-time incomes because, with a helper, neither partner has to stay at home to cook, clean and look after young or elderly family members. Furthermore, access to this, and other non-permanent labour, pushes down the wages of unskilled locals, particularly women.
But perhaps the most interesting statistic in the report is the Gini co-efficient for Hong Kong, adjusted to take account of actual or implicit government subsidies for health, education, and the like. This also indicates that inequality has got worse (the adjusted co-efficient has risen from 0.466 to 0.475). And the gap between this adjusted figure and the unadjusted one tells us most clearly what the government is already doing to narrow the poverty divide and, hence, that it could do more.