Travelling to Hong Kong to study its welfare system may seem like a strange choice to some people. Like travelling to North Korea to study good governance, or Greece to study fiscal prudence.
 
Bryce and I are now back on home soil, after researching Hong Kong’s poverty alleviation policies. We found that while some of the traditional characterisations still hold, any notion that Hong Kong has no welfare system has been blown right out of the water.
 
Hong Kong’s system is still underpinned by a belief that economic growth and employment is the best path out of poverty. Tax revenue is limited, leaving little funding for an expansive welfare state. Combined with Chinese values of family and community responsibility, it would be easy to imagine Hong Kong’s system as very lean.  
 
However, during our visit Bryce and I learned that the support system is much more comprehensive than most people would think.
 
This is best illustrated in the area of housing, which defies the government’s market-based approach. Hong Kong’s housing market is seriously unaffordable.
 
Yet with around fifty percent of the population living in subsidised or public housing, it is hard to believe such strong government involvement will be sustainable. Once the tenants are in, it is incredibly difficult to kick them out. Even when their circumstances improve.
 
To complicate things further, the government owns most of the land, so people in need of housing must either wait for the government to release land (which does not happen often) or join the queue for public housing (which can be up to a three-year wait).
 
And this is just the start. There are calls from academics and advocacy groups to adopt a more Western-style system, but without the Western-style dependency, or at the expense of economic growth.
 
With an ageing population, a shrinking workforce, and China’s continued (but slowing) growth, it is still too early to tell whether such a system is achievable.
 
But here is a lesson from New Zealand: Success should be measured in the improvement of living standards and life outcomes, not in how many programmes or cash transfers the government provides. Indeed, it is the wisdom behind the social investment approach.
 
While it may be surprising to learn the extent of Hong Kong’s welfare system, perhaps people overseas would be equally surprised to learn of the welfare innovations occurring in the land of milk and hobbits.