Adult, child and sibling deprivation in Hong Kong

Since 2012, the Hong Kong SAR government has been producing annual reports of the poverty situation. This paper complements that work by applying the consensual approach to identify and measure deprivation among adults and children. Adults are defined as deprived if they do not have and cannot afford adult necessities, while children are deprived if they do not have but want child necessities. The results indicate that one-in-six adults and almost one-in-four children were deprived in 2016, with both rates increasing with the number of children in the household. The paper then examines the deprivation status of adults and children living in the same household, showing that 12% of households contain at least one deprived child but no deprived adults, with a further 10% of households containing at least one deprived adult but no deprived children. Finally, we compare differences in the deprivation rates of siblings living together and examine how they vary with type of household, and the characteristics of adult and children.