Hong Kong’s poverty figures rise as wealth gap widens

Oxfam Hong Kong released this year's report on poverty in the city, finding that the wealth gap has widened further since the pandemic, with the number of elderly in poverty continuing to rise.

The organization analyzed government data from 2019 to the first quarter of 2024, revealing that over 1.39 million Hong Kong residents are living in poverty, with the city's overall poverty rate reaching 20.2 percent.

The report compared the median monthly household income of the richest and poorest decile of households. In the first quarter of this year, the median monthly income for the poorest ten per cent of households was only HK$1,600, a drastic drop of more than 50 percent compared to before the pandemic. 

In contrast, the wealthiest ten per cent of households had a median monthly income of HK$131,100, a growth of over 10 per cent since 2019.

The poorest decile made 81.9 times less than the richest decile in the first quarter of 2024 - up from 34.3 times in 2019, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the number of poor households in Hong Kong increased to 610,000 in the first quarter of this year, accounting for over 20 percent of all households.

Among them, the number of poor elderly aged 65 or above exceeded 580,000, a sharp increase of 42.9 percent from 2019; the number of poor households with elderly members also reached 260,000, a near-50 percent increase compared to 2019 levels.

Additionally, the report found that the current labor force participation rate for the elderly in Hong Kong is 13.9 percent, lower than mainland China's 25 percent and Norway's 22 percent.