Opinion | Three ways Hong Kong can unleash its greatest potential – human capital
- Faced with an ageing population and a growing demographic imbalance, the city must break away from traditional life planning
- When we reimagine longevity as ‘younger for longer’, not ‘older for longer’, we can allow ‘younger’ people to continue learning and contributing to the economy
Human capital remains indispensable to Hong Kong. In the World Bank’s Human Capital Index 2020, which gauges the productivity of the next generation of workers, Hong Kong ranks second out of 174 economies – behind only Singapore.
According to projections by the Elderly Commission, Hong Kong’s senior population aged 65 and over will increase rapidly, from 15.3 per cent of the total population in 2015 to 30.6 per cent by 2043, and 35.9 per cent by 2064. Research by Our Hong Kong Foundation finds that the median age of the population will hit 51 by 2064, with a dependency ratio of 567 older people to 1,000 of working age.
Faced with an ageing population and a growing demographic imbalance, Hong Kong needs to formulate a new, holistic strategy to maintain a competitive workforce.
While the government is aware of the demographic challenge and includes “Smart People” in its Smart City Blueprint, none of the blueprint’s key indicators point to the necessity of changing the public’s mentality – by reimagining life planning, learning and career development.
Hong Kong needs a bottom-up, socially-driven approach that not just complements existing efforts to promote residential and community aged-care services, but more importantly facilitates a culture shift – similar to that outlined by Andrew Scott and Lynda Gratton in The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World.
