18
REVIEW
A similar difficulty arose over part-time employment. A school- boy or a housewife who did part-time work averaging less than two hours a day was shown as a schoolboy or housewife 'not otherwise employed.' But if the part-time work averaged two hours or more then it had to be shown as the occupation instead of 'schoolboy' or 'housewife.' It will not be possible to decide how this question should be tackled in a Colony-wide census until it has been studied by sample surveys at different seasons.
The key topics of education and literacy were handled in the customary way by recording the highest grade reached. One special feature was that all those of either sex who fell within the Colony's standard school ages (from the sixth to the fifteenth birthday) were treated as a separate group and those neither attending school nor in employment were separately classified. In this latter group there were ninety one thousand children, consisting of nearly three girls to every two boys.
Finally for the first time in any local census an inquiry was made into the question of housing, Hong Kong's biggest problem after water supply. To measure the floor space available for each family would be too much for the census men to take on. To ask how much rent each family paid would have invited as much suspicion as to ask for the figure of family earnings, and little faith could have been placed in the replies. The topics selected were first the type of accommodation, making a clear distinction between housing built of permanent materials such as stone, brick and concrete and that built of non-permanent materials such as wood, thatch, sheet iron and asbestos; and second the tenure. A third topic (the length of time the family has lived in the same accommodation) was included in the pilot censuses in the hope of throwing light on the frequency with which Hong Kong residents move house.
It will be seen that the topics selected confined themselves strictly to fact and avoided matters of notion or opinion. This necessary limitation precluded any closer look at the problem of refugees, for as was clearly demonstrated by the work of Dr Edvard-. Hambro in 1954 a refugee can be identified only by his motives and it is well-nigh impossible to frame a set of questions which
(1) The Problem of Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong, Leyden 1955.