Many people nowadays confuse the words ‘poor’ and ‘rich’. They complain about not being able to live in mansions, dine in 5-star hotels, or have a ride in a Ferrari.
People who suffer from absolute poverty, an approach to define poverty that follows the concept of the subsistence minimum, are incapable to afford goods and services that are regarded as essentials in daily life. In other words, people under the absolute poverty line cannot meet their basic needs. On the contrary, relative poverty is social exclusion. It does not have specific fiscal outlines and changes over time. However, the concept of relative poverty works in relation to society.
Apart from absolute and relative poverty, the income approach is adopted by many regions. For instance, Hong Kong sets 50% of the median income in the population as the official poverty line. Yet, the proportion (i.e. 50%) is unavoidably arbitrary and subjective. The assessment does not fully take the actual consumption needs of the poor, such as meals, clothes, and washing machines, and the non-income benefits provided into account.
I once joined a program organised by a non-governmental organisation. I visited some solitary elderlies and gave them lunchboxes for free (the vegetables were bought by my team, then they were given to Mr Chan Cheuk Ming (明哥) to prepare the lunch boxes). They told us how it feels to live in subdivided flats. They do not even have a refrigerator in their ‘houses’, not to mention a computer. What is more, I saw people sleeping in McDonald’s that night, wearing only a single top and a pair of pants. It was heartbreaking.
To make things worse, the poor are usually discriminated against by middle-income people. Apparently, the rejection of the poor, is common, if not, in MDCs. The poor experiences social exclusion due to their low-education level and necessities deprivation. Moreover, there is this phenomenon called, ‘the poor getting poorer while the rich getting richer in Hong Kong. The gap between the rich and the poor in Hong Kong is widening gradually and thus the living standards of the lower-class people could not improve apparently.
Currently, there are various measures like the CSSA Scheme and Community Care Fund to mitigate the inferior lives of the poor. However, families only receive HKD$3,000 a month on average, which is definitely not enough to raise the children. Therefore, we should volunteer to help them.