Unless you count yourself among Hong Kong's wealthiest citizens, it's likely that you fell behind economically in the last few years - and fell hard.
Between 2005 and 2010, Hong Kong's gross domestic product grew by 26 per cent, and the top earners did well. The average household income of the top 10 per cent of the population increased by 21 per cent, to HK$104,900 a month, according to Hong Kong Census and Statistics Bureau.
But incomes for the lowest-earning 10 per cent of households dropped by HK$100, to an average of HK$2,500 in 2010. And the 80 per cent of the population in between saw their incomes grow only marginally, well below the 14 per cent increase in the Consumer Price Index.
'There is hardly a middle class in the city at all,' said statistician Dr Paul Yip Siu-fai, a senior lecturer at the University of Hong Kong.
A Hong Kong household earning HK$55,000 a month or above could be classified as middle class, Yip said. Yet only about 10 per cent of the 2.4 million households in the city earn that much, according to government figures (an average household has 3.2 persons).
'Our GDP increased by more than 25 per cent, but wages for most people, even the middle class, have not risen at all,' Yip said. 'And they are constantly living in fear that they may be out of a job any time.'
Most Hong Kong people were not sharing the success of the city's economic growth, he added, but were instead continuously exploited by property developers and the very rich.
