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HK Monthly Digest of Statistics now on sale

Two feature articles entitled "Wage statistics for 1987 - 1996" and "Mortality and morbidity of heart diseases in Hong Kong, 1971 - 1994" are published in the February 1997 issue of the Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics, which is now on sale.

The Census and Statistics Department collects wage data from establishments in major industry sectors of the economy through the Labour Earnings Survey (LES) at half-yearly intervals. The survey covers workers at supervisory, technical and craftsman levels and also includes clerical and secretarial workers, operatives and miscellaneous non-production workers.

The article "Wage statistics for 1987 - 1996" describes the general methodology of the LES in relation to the collection of wage statistics and presents the findings of the LES in respect of movements of wage rates, as measured by wage indices, by major industry sector and occupational group over the past decade. The differences between the concept of wage rate and that of earnings are explained.

The wage indices indicate that the growth of wage rates amongst various major sectors and various occupational groups varied during the past ten years, with the financing, insurance, real estate and business services sector and the clerical and secretarial workers recording comparatively faster rates of increase in wage ate than the other sectors and occupational groups.

The manufacturing sector registered the smallest rate of growth in wage rate during the same period. On the other hand, the workers at operative level had the lowest rate of increase in wage. Generally speaking, the year-on-year rates of increase of wage rates for all major sectors, in real terms, were relatively higher during the period from 1987 to 1990 than the period from 1991 to 1996.

In Hong Kong, heart diseases have been the second leading cause of death, after cancer, since the 1960s. The purpose of the article "Mortality and morbidity of heart diseases in Hong Kong, 1971 - 1994" is to analyse the trends of mortality and morbidity of heart diseases in Hong Kong from 1971 to 1994.

The analysis on mortality due to heart diseases is based on various statistics such as deaths, proportionate mortality, crude death rate, age-sex specific death rate, standardised death rate and potential years of life lost at age 65. Regarding morbidity of heart diseases, statistics on in-patients treated and percentage share of in-patients are used.

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