Gulf between rich and poor in Hong Kong widened during coronavirus crisis, charity report finds
- Top income households now earn about 47 times more a month than the poorest, up from 34.3 times in 2019
- Median monthly household income of richest goes up 6.3 per cent on pre-coronavirus levels, but falls by 22.9 per cent for lowest earners
The gulf between rich and poor in Hong Kong has widened during the coronavirus pandemic, with the top bracket of households earning about 47 times more than those at the bottom of the pile, an anti-poverty group has said.
Charity Oxfam Hong Kong, which analysed government statistics from 2019 to the first quarter of this year, warned on Wednesday the situation had reached “a tipping point” and appealed for government action to tackle the problem.
The charity found that the median monthly income for the city’s bottom 10 per cent of households fell by 22.9 per cent from the pre-Covid level of HK$3,500 (US$446) in 2019 to HK$2,700 between January and March this year.
But its report said that the median monthly household income of the top 10 per cent went up by 6.3 per cent from HK$120,000 to HK$127,600.
The top earners made 34.3 times more than the bottom 10 per cent in 2019, but the figure surged to 47.3 times by the first quarter.
“The gap between the rich and the poor has reached a tipping point,” Kalina Tsang Ka-wai, the director general of Oxfam Hong Kong, said. “Covid has widened the gap between the rich and the poor in Hong Kong, and the problem of unemployment and underemployment among the poor remains severe.”
Tsang said the pandemic hit poor people harder than it did the well-off, which led to a higher rate of job and income losses.