Child Poverty - in Hong Kong?

Professor Anne Scully Hill

Social media in Hong Kong and around the world has been buzzing these past few days with news of the Philipino homeless boy who does his homework on the street, at a makeshift bench, by the light from a McDonalds’ window. His determination and diligence have rightly been applauded whilst concern and dismay have been expressed over the level of poverty in which many children are living.

The photo may have been taken in the Philippines, a country widely recognised as struggling with significant levels of poverty, however, Hong Kong, one of the world’s wealthiest societies, should not think its own children immune from a similar fate. According to the Society for Community Organisation, 1 in 4 children in Hong Kong are living below the poverty line; 1 in 5 children in Hong Kong do not have enough to eat each day; and 20,000 children live in ‘cage homes’ where the average living space per person is between 18 and 30 sq. feet.

How can this be, in a territory with a surplus of billions of dollars announced at each annual budget? How can this be in a territory where we throw away thousands of tons of food every day? How can this be in a territory which is not sending its female population overseas to work as poorly paid domestic help but is in fact the recipient of that migrant labour? 

The boy doing his homework outside McDonalds may have been photographed in the Philippines but child poverty lives and flourishes in Hong Kong too. Child poverty is one of the issues that the Third Children’s Issues Forum will address when it considers the lack of consistent, longitudinal data collection about the lives of children in Hong Kong and the very urgent need for such data to develop effective public policy-making.