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Matthew Cheng

Fiona Sun

An ageing society and a widening income gap threaten Hong Kong’s social fabric. In the last of a five-part series on the city’s five-year plan, we look at what can be done to address these key issues. Read part one here, part two here, part three here and part four here.
At 71, Man Chi-ying is the sole carer for her husband, Fung Yu-hoi, a Parkinson’s disease patient.
Fung, who is also 71, has stiff limbs and, on some days, needs his wife’s help getting dressed. She has to hold his hand to keep him from falling. About two months ago, Fung fell and scratched his face while they were out for a walk.
The couple live in a public housing flat in Tsing Yi. They rely on government allowances for the elderly, amounting to a combined HK$8,690 (US$1,108) a month. Their daughter, son-in-law and nine-year-old granddaughter live in Canada.
Man herself is battling multiple health conditions, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease, and takes eight types of medication a day.
“I used to believe that I would depend on his care, but it has turned out to be the opposite,” Man said.
“What will happen if something happens to me? Who will look after him?”
Their plight is all too familiar for social workers tending to Hong Kong’s growing low-income elderly community.
As the city draws up its first five-year plan, experts say that a double whammy of a rapidly ageing population and a potential widening of the wealth gap, accelerated by the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), ranks among the most pressing livelihood challenges.
To cope with social challenges presented by demographic changes and worsening disparities, the city needs a comprehensive population policy, they say.
Their calls align with the national 15th five-year plan, which has a chapter dedicated to population policy and identified addressing an ageing society and a dwindling fertility rate as key priorities.
“We need to look at the overall picture of Hong Kong’s demographic changes over the next five years, including both the quantity and quality of the population,” said Nelson Chow Wing-sun, an emeritus professor at the University of Hong Kong’s (HKU) department of social work and social administration.
“When planning for healthcare, education, social welfare and housing, it ultimately comes down to population shifts, and the resulting demand for these services.”

Ageing population, demographic shifts and declining birth rate
Significant demographic restructuring has shaped Hong Kong in the past decade.
In 2025, about 1.78 million residents were aged 65 or older, accounting for a quarter of the total population – a 60 per cent increase from around 1.11 million, or 16 per cent, in 2015.
“If any society has over 25 per cent [of the total population] aged 65 or above, it is not going to be sustainable,” said Paul Yip Siu-fai, chair professor of population health at HKU’s department of social work and social administration.
Over the same period, the labour force declined from 3.9 million to 3.81 million. The number of births also fell to a record low of 31,100 last year.
“Our working population is shrinking. But at the same time, our population is still growing,” Yip noted. “It will create a lot of challenges in terms of how we can maintain our population to be developed in a healthy and sustainable manner.”
The trend placed a heavy burden on public finances and healthcare services, while also risking a vacuum in the younger workforce that could slow the momentum of development, Yip said.
Even as residents have left Hong Kong for other places, the city has welcomed newcomers under various talent schemes.
Official statistics showed that authorities approved more than 450,000 applications under a slew of talent admission schemes since 2023, with about 330,000, or 73 per cent, from mainland China.
Among them, around 130,000 applications were approved under the Top Talent Pass Scheme alone. The programme is for high earners or graduates from top universities.
Chow said the continuing arrival of such talent would affect housing demand.
The educated newcomers, together with more mainland students, would also lift the city’s overall educational profile and impact the labour market, especially low-income jobs, he said.
He also highlighted changing family structures, including a rise in single-person households due to an ageing population and more people living alone.

All these shifts would determine the city’s housing, social welfare and healthcare needs, he said, and would require careful planning to address the resulting demands.
While at the upper end, newcomers and residents alike will compete for what they can afford, bidding and outbidding one another, at the lower end, the struggle is vastly different.
Housewife Zeng Meishi is among them. Living in a 200 sq ft flat, the 32-year-old mother of two said it was difficult to make ends meet, with the household relying on her husband’s monthly income of about HK$15,000 from construction work.
The family moved into a transitional housing flat in Cheung Sha Wan last month, paying about HK$5,000 in monthly rent. Before that, they had been crammed into an even smaller subdivided flat.
Apart from rent, utilities and other household expenses, Zeng sets aside about HK$2,000 every month to send to her parents on the mainland.
The family obtains supplies, such as rice and cooking oil, from a food bank, and receives second-hand items such as clothes from relatives.
Zeng travels to Shenzhen to see a doctor when she is ill, even though the journey can make her condition worse.
“As long as we do not go hungry, that is all that matters,” Zeng said.
The family cannot afford to enrol her 10-year-old daughter and six-year-old son in English tuition, which costs about HK$200 per session. They had fallen behind in school and felt disheartened, she said.
“I hope for a better life and that my children can receive a good education to have a more promising future,” she said, as she appealed for more financial subsidies.
Sze Lai-shan, deputy director of the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), said low-income residents were desperately in need of more cash allowances, jobs and public housing flats, and cheaper medical services, as well as better education prospects for their children.
The NGO called for poverty alleviation efforts to be stepped up in the five-year plan, including identifying more targeted groups such as new arrivals from the mainland and carers.
These groups, SoCO said, should matter as much as the three vulnerable groups already recognised by the city’s welfare safety nets – elderly households, single-parent families and residents of subdivided flats.
It also suggested allocating more resources to families with young children through tailored support programmes to help break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

AI and the wealth gap
As the national blueprint has tasked Hong Kong with becoming a global innovation and technology hub, the government expects the information and technology (I&T) sector to drive economic growth and create high-quality jobs, thereby improving people’s livelihoods.
However, the rise of AI could pose a deeper long-term challenge – widening income inequality.
Unemployment among younger residents has been climbing. According to the Census and Statistics Department, the jobless rate for people aged 20 to 24 rose from 8.8 per cent in 2023 to 11.2 per cent in 2025, and for those aged 25 to 29, from 4.5 per cent to 5.2 per cent.
The jobless rate in higher-paying sectors is also on the rise.
Unemployment in professional and business services climbed from 2.8 per cent in 2023 to 4 per cent in 2025, while the rate in the information and communications sector rose from 3.6 per cent to 4.2 per cent, both exceeding the overall rate.
Although still below the peak recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic, the figures are approaching levels seen during the 2008 global financial crisis.
While an uncertain economic outlook is partly to blame, academics warn that AI is beginning to displace middle-class, well-paid roles.
“AI can do the co-piloting, can be the research assistants, can do the secretarial job and a lot of the programming job,” Yip said, expressing the fear that AI would change Hong Kong’s income structure from an “olive-shaped” to an “M-shaped” society.
An M-shaped society is one in which the middle class is hollowed out, with two peaks in the high- and low-income distribution reflecting wealth polarisation, while an olive-shaped society has a large middle class and two narrow ends representing the rich and poor.
“If [the middle-class] can learn AI well and adopt well, they will move up. Not learning well, and then they will be pushed down … It is happening. It is just going to get worse, and I am not sure it will get any better,” Yip said.
Cleo Ng, an analyst at a business consultancy firm specialising in digital transformation, is among those hard hit by the rise of AI.
“People in our industry now rely on AI to prepare proposals, but clients themselves can also access AI, so they may no longer need consultants and can already get the same answers,” she said.
“AI has also made it easier for people to enter the profession, but at the same time it has made the job less sought-after than before.”
The 26-year-old observed that demand for manpower in the industry was declining. A project that typically required eight to 10 people in the past now needed only five, with fewer junior positions available.

As consultancy work itself risks being replaced by AI, Ng noted that some clients now preferred to deal directly with technology providers or reduce their budgets, making it harder to secure projects.
“People are frustrated regarding where they should be going,” said Hui Kai-lung, associate provost of academic development and Elman Family Professor of Business at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
“We do not know what options there are for us if we were to change right now. As a result, people want to cling to what they had.”
But he argued that whether AI would widen the wealth gap depended on how people adopted and capitalised on the technology.
While a static snapshot might show a shrinking middle class as some roles gradually disappeared, Hui preferred to look at the dynamic nature of the job market, predicting that new occupations could emerge and fill the gap as innovation advanced.
The national blueprint highlighted the need to address AI’s impact on employment and to create more job opportunities by developing AI and emerging industries.
Hui urged the government to set out a clear 10- to 15-year economic vision and map out how technology could empower key sectors such as finance, tourism, healthcare, and education, alongside a loosely regulated environment that would allow industries to innovate and transform.
HKU’s Yip stressed the need for the government to maintain a balanced approach during the transition, avoiding an excessive tilt towards the I&T sector and manpower misalignment.
He also called for a review of the city’s HK$100 billion annual welfare spending and stronger efforts to retrain residents, particularly underprivileged groups, in AI skills so “no one is left behind”.
Call for a long-term population policy
Beyond such measures, experts urged the authorities to move away from myopic piecemeal schemes and formulate a long-term population policy.
Chow said achieving a demographic composition that supported economic growth and ensuring sufficient services to meet demand were vital.
“The city needs enough manpower and population to support economic growth on one hand, while on the other, it also needs sufficient social services, housing and healthcare to support the demands brought on by these changes,” he said.
The government established the Steering Committee on Population Policy chaired by the chief secretary in 2007, later revamped and expanded it in 2012 to include professionals from various sectors.
The committee published a report in 2015 proposing an array of measures to attract talent, raise the birth rate, and improve care for the elderly, before it was disbanded in 2017.

Former labour and welfare minister Law Chi-kwong acknowledged that the last review of the population policy dated back to 2015. He noted that declining populations were a global trend, citing the mainland, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
“Why should Hong Kong be different?” he asked.
According to Law, the city’s strategy should focus on slowing the worsening birth rate, which he believed could not be reversed, and stepping up efforts to attract overseas students by improving housing options.
Population expert Yip, who served on the committee, called for the re-establishment of a high-level, interdepartmental platform to devise a clear population policy, citing the current lack of coordination among bureaus.
“Population policy is a continuous policy … Especially in the last few years, Hong Kong has undergone a lot of demographic changes,” he said. “You do need someone who is overseeing the situation and then monitoring carefully and doing the timely intervention.”
He proposed key indicators, including an annual population growth rate of 1 per cent to ensure sustainable socio-economic growth without exceeding the city’s capacity.
He also called for diversifying talent sources beyond the mainland.
“Once we become too monopolised by single sources, I think that will put ourselves in an unhealthy situation,” Yip said. “Because if there are any changes to these sources, that will affect us.”
He also suggested setting a target for the city’s working-age dependency ratio to avoid overburdening the economically active population.
Yip expected the city’s inaugural five-year blueprint would lay the foundation for a clear population policy.
“Once we know what role we are going to play, then we can plan our manpower provision, our educational system and our population policy, including the migration aspect, so that everything falls into the right place,” he said.
Such a comprehensive policy may help people like Man, if it does not come too late.
She wants to know how there can be support for her ailing husband if she were to fall ill. For now, she feels relief each day they can rely on each other.
“Sometimes when I’m not feeling well, he’ll bring me a glass of water,” she said.


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Fung Yu-hoi (left) and Man Chi-ying, a couple in their early seventies, rely on government allowances, amounting to a combined HK$8,690 per month. Photo: Elson Li

Paul Yip, chair professor of population health at HKU, warns that the twin challenges of an ageing society and a declining birth rate will put a strain on Hong Kong’s public funds and services. Photo: Sun Yeung

Even in her small 200 sq ft flat, the monthly rent of HK$5,000 and other expenses are onerous for housewife Zeng Meishi and her husband, a construction worker who earns HK$15,000 per month. Photo: Sam Tsang

Sze Lai-shan, deputy director of SoCO, has called for more aid to help targeted groups such as new arrivals from mainland China and carers. Photo: May Tse

Former labour and welfare chief Law Chi-kwong believes Hong Kong’s declining birth rate can be slowed but not reversed. He has called for better housing options to attract overseas students. Photo: Edward Wong

An elderly woman collects cardboard in Sham Shui Po. Photo: Sam Tsang

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Zeng Meishi, 32, in her 200 sq ft transitional housing flat in Cheung Sha Wan. Photo: Sam Tsang

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Experts say the double whammy of a rapidly ageing population and a widening wealth gap presents the city with its most pressing livelihood challenges


Experts say the double whammy of a rapidly ageing population and a widening wealth gap presents the city with its most pressing livelihood challenges.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Experts say the double whammy of a rapidly ageing population and a widening wealth gap presents the city with its most pressing livelihood challenges

Experts say the double whammy of a rapidly ageing population and a widening wealth gap presents the city with its most pressing livelihood challenges