Thursday, September 27, 2018

Hong Kong's rich get richer

Oxfam said funds were needed to address the city’s widening wealth gap – the largest in 45 years. 

The difference between a society’s rich and poor is often measured using the Gini coefficient index of how evenly income is distributed on a scale from zero to one. In June last year, the figure for Hong Kong was 0.539, with zero indicating equality. The United States was at 0.411 and Singapore 0.4579. Hong Kong’s number has climbed 0.006 points since 2006, according to the city’s Census and Statistics Department.

In 2016 the median monthly household income of the top 10 per cent of Hongkongers was 43.9 times the bottom 10 per cent. The poorest would have to work three years and eight months on average to earn what the richest make in a month.

The city’s top 21 tycoons had assets collectively equalling Hong Kong’s HK$1.83 trillion fiscal reserves as of April, according to data published by Forbes. The top five tycoons earned HK$23.6 billion in dividends alone in 2016 and 2017. That amount was also never taxed as Hong Kong does not place a levy on dividends as part of efforts to maintain a “free economy”.

Low-income workers are not sharing the fruits of economic growth. Real wages have only increased 12.3 per cent in the last decade. The purchasing power of the HK$34.50 minimum wage is lower than eight years ago. 

Among children, one in four live below the poverty line. The figure for the elderly is one in three.
This year the government is spending 14 per cent of total expenditure on public health care. As a comparison, last year spending in Canada amounted to 18.1 per cent, and 19.2 in South Korea. Social welfare spending accounts for 16.5 per cent in Hong Kong – lower than all seven members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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