This page details poverty-​related research car­ried out in the last three decades. Key research pub­li­ca­tions have been divided into the fol­low­ing groups/​areas. Some freely avail­able pub­li­ca­tions can be down­loaded in PDF directly from the site.

The first offi­cial poverty line (PL) is defined as 50% of the median monthly house­hold income (MMHI) of all domes­tic house­holds in Hong Kong, prior to pol­icy inter­ven­tion, such as tax and social ben­e­fits trans­fers. The PL is based upon the con­cept of rel­a­tive poverty, and the poverty thresh­olds will be reviewed annu­ally with ref­er­ence to the MMHI movement.

For 2012, the PL was HK$3,600 for sin­gle­ton, HK$7,700 for a 2-​person house­hold, HK $11,500 for a 3-​person house­hold, HK$14,300, HK $14,800 and HK$15,800 for a 4– , 5– and 6-​person and above respec­tively (Fig­ure 1). Before pol­icy inter­ven­tion, 1.31 mil­lion of pop­u­la­tion (19.6%) was liv­ing in poverty. The poor pop­u­la­tion was dropped to 1.02 mil­lion (15.2%) after recur­rent cash intervention.

The rel­e­vant doc­u­ments issued by the Com­mis­sion on Poverty (CoP) can be down­loaded via www​.pover​tyre​lief​.gov​.hk, includ­ing:

• Hong Kong’s First Offi­cial Poverty Line – Pur­pose and Value
• Set­ting of the Poverty Line and Analy­sis of the Poverty Situation
• Hong Kong Poverty Sit­u­a­tion Report 2012

Fig­ure 1: The poverty line by house­hold size (2009−2012)

Source: The Com­mis­sion of Poverty (2013). Hong Kong Poverty Sit­u­a­tion Report 2012. Hong Kong: Gov­ern­ment of the Hong Kong Spe­cial Admin­is­tra­tive Region, Fig­ure 2.1.