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
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.