4,682 Hong Kong families will get HK$20,000 baby bonuses in February, senior official says
- Government received the eligible applications between October 25 and January 8, Deputy Chief Secretary Warner Cheuk says
- ‘The purpose [for the incentive] is to let the entire society face up to the long-term problem of falling birth rates and to reverse the deteriorating trend,’ he adds
More than 4,600 families of newborns in Hong Kong will receive one-off HK$20,000 (US$2,600) cash incentives in late February, a senior official has said, while calling on society to reverse the city’s plummeting birth rates.
Deputy Chief Secretary Warner Cheuk Wing-hing on Wednesday revealed that 4,682 eligible applications for the government’s scheme were submitted between October 25 and January 8.
The cash bonus was introduced by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu in his policy address last year in a bid to boost the city’s falling birth rate.
Hong Kong’s total fertility rate – the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – has plunged to 0.8, the lowest in the world.
A 40 per cent decline in the number of babies was also registered over four years, going from 52,900 in 2019 to 32,500 in 2022.
“The problem is serious and urgent,” Cheuk said. “The purpose [for the incentive] is to let the entire society face up to the long-term problem of falling birth rates and to reverse the deteriorating trend.
“Some critics doubted the measure’s effectiveness, calling it a stand-alone attempt to ‘turn the tide single-handedly’, but after they understood this is just a part of a series of measures, the social support towards it increased noticeably.”
Cheuk added that if the Legislative Council gave the green light to the funding proposal on Friday, the “red pocket money” would be disbursed to the parents in late February.
The government is seeking HK$2.29 billion in non-recurrent funding for the three-year scheme, which can support as many as 114,300 newborns in total, or 38,100 babies every year.
The number of births is expected to increase by 20 per cent starting in the 2024-25 financial year, compared with those logged in 2022, with about 39,000 newborns every year.
In his last policy address, Lee rolled out a series of measures in a bid to tackle the record-low birth rate.
In addition to the baby bonus, the government will provide couples with babies born on October 25, 2023, or after easier access to subsidised flats and public rental housing.
About 10 per cent of the subsidised flats for balloting will be allocated to those families, who will also have priority in selecting homes.
If they opt to buy, or rent a flat, their tax reduction ceiling for interest on home loans or domestic rents will be raised from HK$100,000 to HK$120,000, until the child reaches 18.
Those queuing up for public housing flats will also have their waiting time cut by a year, starting in April.
The government is set to raise the working family allowance by 15 per cent, add 900 places at day childcare services and extend an after-school care programme for pre-primary pupils.
