XN000022-1997-01-08 — Page 38

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Reply:

(a)

(b)

Based on data on household income obtained from the 1996 Population By-census, a Gini coefficient can be compiled to reflect the distribution of household income in Hong Kong. Its value is 0.518. However, as no data are available on the wealth of households, it is not possible to compile a Gini coefficient on the distribution of wealth in the territory.

Also, because a Gini coefficient calculated on the above basis does not take into account various elements of "social wage" including the heavily subsidised public housing and services of public health, education, social welfare etc, the coefficient itself does not fully reflect the effective distribution of the well-being of households in Hong Kong.

Based on the results of the 1996 Population By-census, the decile distribution of household income is shown below:

Decile group

Percentage share of all household income

1st (lowest)

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

9th

10th (highest)

Total

1.1

2.6

3.6

4.6

5.7

7.0

8.5

10.6

14.5

41.8

100.0

Note: Each of the 10 decile groups contains the same number of households, ranked by income. The first decile group encloses those households falling below the first decile, the second decile group encloses those households falling between the first and second deciles, and so on.