Hong Kong to use 21 indicators to define poor after dropping income metric

Hong Kong is adopting a new 21-indicator framework to define poverty, moving away from its previous income-based metric. This change, detailed in a government report released on Thursday, aims to provide a more accurate measure of the underprivileged population. The previous income-only approach was criticized for overestimating poverty by not accounting for the significant value of public housing and healthcare subsidies. For the first time, the government introduced the concept of "social transfer values" to quantify the financial benefit families receive from subsidized public services. Hong Kong's Chief Secretary, Eric Chan Kwok-ki, described the report as an assessment of the city's poverty alleviation efforts.