2021年6月8日
Brian Wong
EJ Insight
Hong Kong needs a more cogent population policy
Hong Kong – a city with one of the highest life expectancies in the world. A city packed to brim with wealth, affluence, and decadence. Also – a city with a rapidly ageing population – and whose demographic crisis has no end in sight. There's an imminent and real problem, and it behooves us to tackle it.
Tracing Hong Kong's ageing population should be a relatively straightforward task. The city is well-equipped with unrivalled infrastructure and health services – with world-class doctors, medical practitioners, and a copious level of capital invested into the quality of life of its citizens. The inequality certainly is regrettable and abhorrent, but a vast majority of Hongkongers lead largely placid, unperturbed lives that stretch easily into the mid- to late 80s.
On the other hand, we've seen a continued decline in birth rates and fertility rates. From the record sub-one lows in the early 2000s (0.92 in 2004) to the latest figure of 1.05 babies per woman, Hong Kong's fertility rates have remained – throughout the past two decades – well below the natural replacement rate of 2.1. This is in stark juxtaposition to the mainland, whose dwindling births have ruffled plenty a feather in Beijing – and triggered the drastic pivot to three-child policy last week. ...
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