Views sought:
From left: Secretary for Education Eddie Ng, Secretary for Labour & Welfare Matthew Cheung, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam and Secretary for Security TK Lai announce the population policy consultation.
Views sought:
From left: Secretary for Education Eddie Ng, Secretary for Labour & Welfare Matthew Cheung, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam and Secretary for Security TK Lai announce the population policy consultation.
Population consultation launches
October 24, 2013
The Government today launched a four-month consultation on population policy, to garner views on how to deal with an ageing population, low birth rate, and declining workforce.
At a media briefing to announce the consultation, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, who is also population policy steering committee chairman, said Hong Kong’s population is ageing fast, and nearly one in every three people in the city will be 65 or older by 2041. The labour force will start declining from 2018, she added, as the city continues to face a low birth rate.
The committee has suggested ways of dealing with population challenges, including increasing labour force quality by improving education and training and minimising skills mismatch, attracting talent from overseas and the Mainland, removing barriers to childbearing, building an age-friendly environment, promoting active ageing and developing the “silver hair” market.
Mrs Lam said the committee did not agree with the idea of setting a population cap, as it could hinder economic growth. She said Hong Kong’s population has grown only 0.6% each year on average in the past decade, and is expected to grow at the same rate until 2041.
Nor is changing the One-way Permit Scheme an answer to the problem, she said, as it is designed for allowing family reunions and there is a continued need for the scheme.
Around 784,000 new arrivals settled in the city between 1997 and June of this year, she said, of which 98% were Hong Kong people’s spouses or children – while cross-boundary marriages account for up to 35% of locally-registered marriages.
The consultation will end on February 23.
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