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Professor Joshua Mok Ka-ho of Lingnan University was a member of the research team. Photo: Martin Chan

One in six Hong Kong children cannot afford to eat out, study finds

Research by universities reveals extent of social disadvantages among those from poor families

Poverty

More than a tenth of the city’s children do not have a suitable place to study and one in six of them cannot afford a meal with friends, joint research by ­several universities has found.

The research conducted by Lingnan University, City University, Chinese University, the ­University of Bristol and University of York in the United Kingdom and University of New South Wales in Australia, was an effort funded by the Central Policy Unit and the Research Grants Council of the government to study the implications of children living in poverty and their social ­disadvantages.

The research results followed an announcement in October by Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor that the child poverty rate last year was 23.2 per cent ­before government assistance, equivalent to 235,100 children under the age of 18.

It represented a 2.2 per cent drop from the percentage recorded in 2009.

“We do have a slowly falling trend [in child poverty], but we still have a long way to go if ­compared to other developed economies such as Norway and Finland – it is 5 per cent over there,” research team member Professor Joshua Mok Ka-ho from Lingnan ­University said.

Researchers first interviewed a group of children ranging from those in Primary Five to Secondary Six, including those from low-income families.

We do have a slowly falling trend [in child poverty], but we still have a long way to go
Professor Joshua Mok Ka-ho, Lingnan University

They were given a list and asked to tick items they considered “necessities”.

Their results, featuring 21 choices considered necessities by more than half of those polled, were then listed a second time for 793 children, aged 10 to 17, randomly sampled from June 2014 to August 2015.

On the things deemed to be necessities, 4 per cent of all children surveyed said they did not have a computer at home, 12.9 per cent said they could not afford extra curricular activities and 13.9 per cent did not have a suitable place to study.

Some 17.6 per cent said they could not afford to have meals out with friends.

“In the Chinese culture, eating out with friends is an important social engagement. We believe if less affluent children ­cannot ­afford to do so it may also mean they are deprived from ­activities they believe are ­important in their lives,” Mok said.

The research, after dividing child interviewees into five equal groups according to their equivalised household income, found that 37.1 per cent of children from the least affluent group said they “don’t but would like” to save for the future.

Some 35.8 per cent of them said they “don’t but would like” to participate in leisure ­activities with people of their age, for example by going to the cinema.

City University researcher Maggie Lau Ka-wai said the ­government should consider using another approach when it came to child poverty alleviation ­measures in the future.

“We think it is important to take the subjective well-being of children into consideration ­instead of only defining that they are in poverty from a monetary perspective,” Lau said.

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