Hongkongers who do not want children cited the city’s education system and political situation as among the main reasons behind their decision, a survey has found, as the government seeks to raise the fertility rate.
According to World Bank data in 2022, each Hong Kong couple had 0.7 children on average, making its birth rate the lowest worldwide, just below South Korea’s, which was 0.8.
Children plays in a park in Hong Kong in October 2023. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
An online survey conducted by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI) found that over 60 per cent of respondents who did not have children said they did not wish to have one, with more than half citing the city’s education system.
Of the 2,496 valid responses PORI collected by email from October 3 to 9, 58 per cent of respondents who did not wish to have children cited the education system, while 43 per cent attributed their stance to the city’s political environment, and 43 per cent cited the city’s living space.
Those factors ranked “much higher” than personal factors such as family and career development, PORI found.
‘A distant goal’
“If the government does not recognize the public’s concerns about the education system and address its shortcomings, tackling the low fertility rate problem will remain a distant goal,” PORI said in a statement when it released its findings on Tuesday.
The city’s falling fertility rate “induced serious discussions on the importation of talents and foreign labour, the reintroduction of ‘double non-permanent residents’, and other population policies stemming from low fertility,” it added.
In the city of more then 7.5 million, deaths surpassed births by 18,100 from mid-2023 to mid-2024, with 34,400 births and 52,400 deaths recorded by the Census and Statistics Department.
In May, the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong found that 51.1 per cent of young women and 44.8 per cent of young men wanted children.
Bonuses
PORI released its survey results just days after the government announced that it had distributed around HK$520 million under a “baby bonus” scheme that grants families with newborns HK$20,000.
A man looks at the Hong Kong skyline. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
The measure was announced during Chief Executive John Lee’s Policy Address last year in a bid to boost the city’s birth rate.
The government expanded the scheme this April to also include public housing priority, with about 2,300 public housing applications being reduced by a year as of this September, according to a Legislative Council document.
Families with newborns are also afforded a better chance to purchase subsidised sale flats under a similar arrangement.
