Hong Kong’s wealth gap has continued to widen, driven in part by a growing population of impoverished elderly residents, a prominent charity reported on Wednesday.
According to Oxfam Hong Kong’s annual poverty report, the wealthiest 10% of households in the city earned 81.9 times more than the poorest in the first quarter of 2024, up sharply from 34.3 times in 2019. The median monthly income for the poorest households plummeted by more than half compared to pre-pandemic levels, to just HK$1,600, while the richest earned an average of HK$131,100.
“The income disparity is continuing to rise. One of the issues is that the number of poor elderly people is rising, especially those singleton and doubleton elderly families,” said Kalina Tsang, director general of Oxfam Hong Kong.
The report pointed to government statistics showing that over 1.39 million people, or 20.2% of Hong Kong’s population, were living below the poverty line, surviving on less than half the city’s median household income. Among those considered “economically inactive”, including retirees, the poverty rate reached 33.1% in the first quarter.
More than 580,000 individuals aged 65 or above were living in poverty, the vast majority of them economically inactive.
Tsang called on the Hong Kong government to take action to address the growing challenge of elderly poverty, urging officials to promote active aging and make it easier for seniors to reintegrate into the job market.
“They have to establish a database to identify the elderly target group and how they can have more accurate policy to support these elderly people in Hong Kong,” she said. “The government should devise enabling policies to create more job opportunities for the elderly people, if they are willing and able to participate in the market.”
Tsang also said the administration should streamline the application process for the government’s employment program targeted at the elderly and middle-aged, as well as lowering the eligibility threshold for the Working Family Allowance Scheme.
