TITLE:
Widening of a Poverty Gap: A Condition of Governance Crisis in Hong Kong
AUTHORS:
Alfred C. M. Chan, Stephen Y. L. Cheung, Tony C. K. Lai
KEYWORDS:
Poverty Gap; Income Disparity; Social Indicator; Governance Crisis; Economic and Social Tensions; Media and Public Opinions
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.4 No.3,
March
12,
2014
ABSTRACT: Hong Kong as a free society, where capitalistic
economy is essentially adopted, has failed to balance the distribution of
resources and led to the widening of income disparity, indicated by a Gini
coefficient of over 0.53 (Ma, 2011) as well as the
stagnation of median household income of $18,000 across 10 years (The World Bank, 2012). The problem of poverty
and income inequality had been increasingly felt by the citizens (Wong, Wan, & Law, 2010) which severs the
stability and legitimacy of the Hong Kong Government’s rule which hinges on the
materialistic benefit for the whole citizenship (Ma, 2011). The unchangeable fate
of poverty as well as the increasing pursuit of social justice (as indicated by
an increase of keywords such as “Corporate social responsibility”: 6
occurrences in 2001; 522 in 2010) leads to the emergence of scepticism and
grievances against the privileged rich (as indicated by an increase of keywords
such as “Hate-rich”: 0 in 2001;
1257 in 2010). Failure to identify the social confrontation and to exert the
Government’s role of resource redistribution will lead to governance crisis (Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts,
1978). Hence, the manager requires indication tools to
assess the situation (Holzer
& Kloby, 2005). A quantifiable social indicator of media coverage (Bengston & Fan, 1999) is required to evaluate
objectively the qualitative social tension.