Fixing Inequality in Hong Kong

Yue Chim Richard Wong

• Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Economics
• eBook ISBN:
  9789888390380
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

When discussing inequality and poverty in Hong Kong, scholars and politicians often focus on the failures of government policy and push for an increase in social welfare. Richard Wong argues in Fixing Inequality in Hong Kong that universal retirement support, minimum wage, and standard hours of work are of limited effect in shrinking the inequality gap. By comparing Hong Kong with Singapore, he points out that Hong Kong needs a new and long-term strategy on human resource policy. He recommends more investment in education, focusing on early education and immigration policy reforms to attract highly educated and skilled people to join the workforce. In analyzing what causes inequality, this book ties disparate issues together into a coherent framework, such as Hong Kong's aging population, lack of investment in human capital, and family breakdowns. Rising divorce rates among low-income households have worsened the housing shortage, driving rents and property prices upwards. Housing problems have created a bigger gap between those who own housing and have the ability to invest in their children's human capital and those who cannot, thus adversely impacting intergenerational upward mobility. This is the third of Richard Wong's collections of articles on society and economy in Hong Kong. Diversity and Occasional Anarchy and Hong Kong Land for Hong Kong People, published by Hong Kong University Press in 2013 and 2015 respectively, discuss growing economic and social contradictions in Hong Kong and current housing problems and their solutions.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Synopsis
• Title Page
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Tackling Inequality in the 21st Century
• 1. Rekindling Hong Kong’s Magic
• 2. The Population Numbers Challenge
• 3. The Population Quality Challenge
• 4. Human Capital Enhancement through Education and Immigration
• 5. Differential Growth Rates in Singapore and Hong Kong
• 6. What Is Wrong with the Poverty Line
• 7. The Poverty Line and the Value of Public Rental Housing Subsidies to the Poor
• 8. Social Welfare Policy and an Income Subsidy Scheme
• 9. Social Programs, Third-Sector Competition, and Transparency
• 10. Policies for Addressing Near-Poverty
• 11. Human Capital, Poverty, Inequality, and Intergenerational Mobility
• 12. Education and Individual Income Inequality
• 13. Education, Divorce, and Household Income Inequality in Hong Kong
• 14. The Top 1% and Top 10% of Income Earners
• 15. Education and Earnings of the Bottom 99%
• 16. Upward Mobility in the United States and Hong Kong
• 17. Factors Critical for Improving Intergenerational Mobility
• 18. Why Family Savings and Investing in Children Matter to the Economy
• 19. Early Childhood Education
• 20. Growing up in Hong Kong before and after 1980
• 21. Growing up in Hong Kong before and after 1980
• 22. Divorce, Inequality, Poverty, and the Vanishing Middle Class
• 23. Divorce and Dynamic Poverty
• 24. Finding $3.336 Trillion in Housing Capital
• 25. The High Cost of Regulating Development
• 26. Building Codes and Postwar Reconstruction in Hong Kong
• 27. On Hong Kong’s High Land Prices
• 28. Demographics and Business Entrepreneurship
• 29. New Strategies Needed as Third Industrial Age Unfolds
• 30. Attract Immigrants or Become Like Japan
• 31. On Balancing Rising Long-Term Budgets for a Free Society
• 32. Health Care and Rising Public Budgets
• 33. Means-Tested Old Age Allowances versus Universal Retirement Schemes
• 34. Tackling Long-Term Budget Deficits in an Aging Society
• 35. Greece and Hong Kong
• 36. Minimum Wage Effects on Household Income Distribution and the Labor Market
• 37. The Value of Not Working and Long Working Hours
• 38. Demystifying the Rising Poverty Rate
• 39. Reflections on Old Age Poverty in Public Rental Housing Estates
• 40. The Challenge of Poverty, Near-Poverty, and Inequality in 21st-Century Hong Kong