Low-income Hong Kong workers unhappier after joining government allowance scheme
Study shows recipients have to work long hours but be careful to keep household income below limit to qualify for aid
Despite having more spending money, low-income working families getting a government allowance were found to be less happy than before, according to a year-long study on 1,900 individuals from households earning less than HK$24,000 a month.
“A tram driver told me that he had to carefully calculate the overtime hours he could work every month,” said Chinese University associate professor of social work Wong Hung, who led the study from last August to last month.
The long working hours left breadwinners exhausted and with little time left to spend with their loved ones, Wong added.
When asked to rate their happiness on a scale from zero to 10, a smaller group of 190 individual recipients gave an average score of 6.13 before the policy was implemented and 5.64 after they started to receive the allowance.
Scholars commissioned by the Central Policy Unit to conduct the research advised the government to streamline allowance applications across the board by lowering the threshold for working hours and raising the upper limit on household income.
So far, about 119,000 individuals have been granted some HK$640 million under the allowance scheme as of June – a year after the scheme was rolled out last May – far behind the government’s target to support 700,000 people.