Growing up in Hong Kong before and after 1980

Author(s):  
Yue Chim Richard Wong

Hong Kong’s public housing estates are transforming into areas of growing poverty, with more divorced households. They are increasingly weak neighborhoods for motivating children to higher aspirations. There are doubts about the wisdom of continuing the development of more public rental housing units to solve our shortage of housing units. A far better solution is to build subsidized homes for ownership so that families have a stake to stay together and work for a better future. By keeping families together, more children will be prevented from falling into a state of disadvantage that will be detrimental to their future upward social mobility. Why foster and concentrate the poor and the divorced in publicly subsidized ghettos? Poor children deserve a better deal. A city of homeowners is also less politically divided.

Author(s):  
Yue Chim Richard Wong

Privatizing the public rental housing estates would create a very large client pool of elderly homeowners willing to take advantage of mortgage-backed annuity schemes in the era of modern finance. This would create better opportunities for diversifying risks associated with the uncertainty of life expectancy. A bigger market could lead to better terms to the benefit of all participants. And, if the elderly poor in our public housing estates became homeowners, perhaps their children would pay them more attention. In principle, recurrent government funding is not required because it would be financed by land that currently has no market value because public rental housing units are nontraded assets. Selling public rental housing units to sitting tenants would restore the market value of a non- traded asset that could provide old age support for elderly people.


1998 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Weinger

Growing up in poverty often diminishes a child's opportunity to pursue a rewarding career path. This qualitative study explored whether poor children are aware that their wealthier peers' chances for success may be greater than their own. Projective techniques employing photographs of two houses representing poor and middle-income families were used to interview twenty-four children between the ages of five and thirteen years, divided equally between white and African Americans. These respondents perceived that society provides better future job opportunities to nonpoor children while limiting those of the poor. Although respondents suggested that they and their friends could be exceptions to these limitations, indications of their beginning feelings of hopelessness were revealed. The author proposes strategies to assist in strengthening poor children's belief in themselves and their future.


Author(s):  
Yue Chim Richard Wong

There is one very simple and costless way to alleviate poverty in one fell swoop. All one has to do is to transfer full private ownership rights of the public housing units to the occupying tenant free of charge. . … This would, according to the government study, lift 600,000 households in public rental housing above the poverty line. This would have been the best Christmas gift the Poverty Commission could bestow on the poor people in Hong Kong on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of the Shek Kip Mei Fire.


Author(s):  
Nurina Adi Paramitha ◽  
Supriyadi Supriyadi ◽  
Ahmad Zuber

Education influences upward movement in vertical social mobility. With scholars not returning to villages, upward social mobility in a farmer’s society slows down. The research was conducted from September 2017 until April 2018 in Wringinpitu village, Tegaldlimo sub-district, Banyuwangi district with the aim of determining upward social mobility of farmers in Wringinpitu village. Upward social mobility is determined by the differences in a farmer’s life, before and after planting oranges, land ownership, wealth, and social position in a society. The research uses a qualitative case study design with data collected through observation, documentation, and in-depth interviews. The informants were selected based on a purposive sampling method. The data was then validated by triangulation and analyzed using the interactive model. The results has shown that the factors affecting upward social mobility was not only due to higher education levels but also from opportunities, family background, and social capital. Scholarly farmers achieve the highest social position while farmers with only junior high school background having the lowest social position. The less educated farmers are less able to absorb information and make innovations. Scholarly farmers are more successful and become role models for other farmers. Farmer with higher education are able to achieve higher vertical social mobility and vice versa. The results of the research propose that educational institutions should educate and motivate scholars to return to their villages as agents of change.


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