Poverty line a limited marker, Hong Kong minister says, as aid focus expands to carers

Hong Kong’s welfare minister has defended the government’s earlier decision to drop the poverty line as an indicator for allocating assistance, saying it was a limited “statistical concept” that failed to identify needy groups beyond those with low income, such as carers.

A day after the government unveiled a new 21-indicator framework to identify vulnerable groups in a report, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-Han on Friday said authorities would expand their focus to include how best to support carers.

“The needs of carers are varied and they face many difficulties. We will look into the issue after we set up a new commission on targeted poverty alleviation,” he said.

This was in addition to the three existing groups – families living in subdivided flats, single-parent families and all-elderly households – identified by the Commission on Poverty in its report on the impact of the government’s targeted poverty alleviation strategy, released on Thursday.

“The biggest drawback is that it cannot tell you who is poor, what they need, or how we should help them. It cannot tell at all,” Sun, explaining why the poverty line had not been used in the new report.

He called the poverty line a “very statistical concept that is purely based on income and took no account of other things”.