HONG KONG — Hong Kong's wealth gap has increased markedly over the past decade under Chinese rule, making the affluent city one of the most inequitable places in Asia, according to new government statistics.
Hong Kong's Gini coefficient — a widely used measure of income disparity — increased to 0.533 in 2006 from 0.525 in 2001, the last available figure. It showed that Hong Kong's working poor were getting poorer or had not broadly benefited from the city's overall economic recovery.
In 1996, the figure stood at 0.518 on a scale where 0 represents perfect equality and 1 complete inequality. Taiwan, by comparison, had a figure of 0.326 in 2000. China's figure currently stood at 0.447, economists estimate.
"The Gini coefficient in Hong Kong is comparable to Mexico and is much higher ... than China and Indonesia," said Wong Hung, a social work academic at Hong Kong's Chinese University.
"In Hong Kong, we face the problem of the working poor and many people are now working in the low-wage and low-skilled sector and we don't have a minimum wage to protect those workers," he added.
Growing concern
Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang said recently that the city's economy was in its best shape in 20 years, but he admitted in a recent interview with Hong Kong's Cable Television that income disparity was a growing concern.
"My attitude toward the wealth gap, especially with regard to poverty, is something that we definitely have to work hard on, to improve it," Tsang told Cable TV.
According to a study by Oxfam and Hong Kong's Chinese University, the number of "working poor", or those living on less than HK$5,000 ($640) per month, half of Hong Kong's median household income, had risen to around 350,000 — 5 percent of the population — in 2006.
