What is Hong Kong actually doing to reduce poverty among workers and the elderly?

The minimum wage, hardly enough to support a family, should have been raised last year instead of being frozen at 2019 rates

A rise in the retirement age is also inevitable as the working population shrinks and the number of unemployed elderly increases

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A street cleaner at work in Victoria Park on November 1, 2021. Some 16,500 workers in Hong Kong earn the minimum wage. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Mike Rowse

Mike Rowse has lived in Hong Kong since 1972, and is a naturalised Chinese citizen.

Published: 2:30pm, 16 Jan 2022

One of the great side effects of taking part in an election campaign is that it obliges the candidate to step back from the frantic hurly-burly of current events and identify the issues that really matter to a society.

Thus it was that, in the run-up to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council election in December, I found myself thinking a great deal about poverty.

Poverty is a word with layers of depth but, for the purposes of my campaign, I focused on two aspects: the situation of the working poor, and poverty among the elderly.

In Hong Kong, we draw the poverty line at 50 per cent of the median household income, which works out at HK$4,400 (US$560) for a single person, HK$9,500 for a couple, and HK$20,800 for a four-person household.

Latest estimates are that some 16,500 employees in Hong Kong earn the basic minimum wage, which was set at its current rate of HK$37.50 (US$4.84) per hour on May 1, 2019. The biennial review in 2021 froze it at that level for another two years. My manifesto recommended that it be increased to HK$60 per hour progressively over the next Legco term.

Even at HK$40 per hour, a person working eight hours a day for 25 days per month would earn only HK$8,000, insufficient for two people let alone a family. Is it socially just when a person works a full shift but does not earn enough to support his or her family?