950,000 targeted in new poverty alleviation framework

The government has identified around 950,000 elderly people, single-parent households and subdivided flat tenants for targeted poverty alleviation, in a bid to measure the city's poverty more effectively. Around 555,000 senior citizens, 213,000 single-parent families and 214,000 people living in subdivided flats are included. In a Legco paper, the Labour and Welfare Bureau said the move was based on the latest statistics of household characteristics, employment and income conditions. Since 2013, the official measure of poverty has been defined as living in a household with a monthly income below 50 percent of the median. But the bureau said the current measurement may lead to an "overestimation" of the poverty situation in Hong Kong. "Since the 'poverty line' was formulated based on the concept of 'relative poverty', poor households will always exist under 'relative poverty' regardless of the effectiveness of the poverty alleviation work," the paper said. "This may create the wrong impression to the public that 'more people become poor despite more resources being put in'. These limitations will in the long run weaken the function of the 'poverty line' in monitoring the actual poverty situation." The bureau added that officials will offer help to the three target groups through various poverty alleviation projects, and set key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the new poverty framework. Lawmakers are set to discuss the paper during a welfare services panel meeting next Monday.