Hong Kong welfare chief disagrees with official data showing 1.5 million people under poverty line, argues figure does not reflect government aid

Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong told a radio programme on Thursday it was wrong to directly extrapolate that 21.4 per cent of the city’s population were living below the poverty line, based on the Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report 2019.

“It doesn’t tell us how many people are actually living below the poverty line. It tells us how many people would be living in poverty if the government does nothing at all,” Law said, pointing out the figures released were not representative of the absolute number of people in that category.

He explained that after factoring in various social security allowances and government relief subsidies, the poverty rate was only 9.2 per cent, or a population of 640,000. That meant the so-called post-intervention poverty rate marginally improved by 0.1 percentage points from 9.3 per cent in 2018, he said.

Law said critics took the chance to “scold the government” by misinterpreting data, stressing authorities had rolled out cash assistance and various support programmes to help the underprivileged.

He added that the difference between the headline poverty figures and the number of people in poverty after government aid showed the efficiency of the administration’s programmes by lifting about 850,000 residents above the mark.