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The Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) recently conducted a telephone survey exploring public views on the wealth disparity in Hong Kong. The results showed that about two-thirds of the public believed that the problem of the disparity between rich and poor in Hong Kong was serious, and 80.1% of them thought the Government should do more to fix this problem.

The telephone survey was conducted in the evening during the period from 27 May 2022 to 14 June 2022, and a total of 710 citizens aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed (landline: 350; mobile: 360). The results showed that 67.1% of the respondents believed that the current disparity between rich and poor in Hong Kong was serious, while 26.3% said it was “in-between”. Only 4.4% felt it was not serious. Compared with five years ago, 51.6% of the respondents believed that the situation had become more serious. 37.0% opined that it was similar and only 7.2% thought that it had improved. Regarding their estimation of the wealth gap in the next five years, 37.4% of the respondents believed that it would be similar to the current situation, 28.5% expected it to widen and only 19.2% believed it would narrow.

Faced with the current wealth disparity in Hong Kong, 80.1% of the respondents said that the Government should do more to solve the problem, while 12.9% said that there was no need to change, and only 1.2% felt that less should be done.

The survey also found that 83.2% of the respondents said that their current household income was sufficient to cover their daily expenses, while 11.1% of them answered that it was insufficient. When the respondents were asked whether people’s poverty was mainly caused by personal factors (such as laziness and overspending) or social factors (such as unfair systems and monopoly of resources), 42.9% answered that it was due to social factors and 21.6% believed it was because of personal factors, while 26.2% thought both mattered.

The survey employed a dual-frame sampling design that included both landline and mobile phone numbers; their response rates were 26.4% (landline) and 28.1% (mobile) respectively. The sampling error for a sample size of 710 is estimated at plus or minus 3.68 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Furthermore, the data in this survey was weighted based on the probability of the respondents being selected via a dual-frame sampling design and on the latest information on the age-sex distribution of the population published by the Census and Statistics Department.