Hong Kong has become the world\u2019s most unequal society in terms of wealth distribution, a study has found, as the core drivers of income inequality in the city have shifted from wage disparities to capital concentration, reducing social mobility.<\/p>\n
The findings of the study, which analysed the evolution of income and wealth inequality in the city between 1981 and 2021, were presented by Yang Li, an advanced researcher at the Germany-based ZEW-Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, during a seminar hosted by the University of Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
Yang said Hong Kong\u2019s wealth disparities were no longer fuelled by differences in wages, but rather by capital asset ownership \u2013 which generates investment returns that favour a small segment of the population.<\/p>\n
The share of capital in Hong Kong\u2019s total income surged following the Asian financial crisis \u2013 from around 35 per cent in 2000 to 55 per cent in 2019. That significantly outpaced other high-income economies, such as the US, Britain and Germany, where the capital share typically hovered between 20 per cent and 30 per cent, Yang said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wealthy become unseen and invest in things that you do not know about, and the amounts are actually much, much larger than labour income,\u201d Yang said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd only a small group of people benefit from the rise of capital\u2019s share in income, because you can only invest when you have money.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong has become the world\u2019s most unequal society in terms of wealth distribution, a study has found,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[105892,28,101,6797,5425,312511,312514,1206,312510,312512,2761,21,6112,60200,312515,312513],"class_list":["post-726313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asian-financial-crisis","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-germany","tag-hong-kong","tag-leibniz-centre-for-european-economic-research","tag-paris-school-of-economics","tag-russia","tag-society-for-community-organization","tag-sze-lai-shan","tag-uk","tag-united-states","tag-university-of-hong-kong","tag-world-happiness-report","tag-world-inequality-lab","tag-yang-li"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}