Immigration and Economic Growth in Hong Kong

Abstract

Sustainable economic growth is a major policy target of many governments over the world; Hong Kong also has no exception after its sovereignty handover on 1^st July 1997. Hong Kong has also been inertly receiving more than one hundred Chinese immigrants every day for several decades which mainly serves the purpose of family reunion through One-way Permit scheme. There exists a public voice in relation to Chinese immigrants' intentions of migrating to Hong Kong; some people argued Chinese immigrants are not simply aimed to reunifying their family but purposely grasping public resources of Hong Kong; public resources include public healthcare benefits and subsidized public housing; such hidden motivation and immigrants' economic contribution are not theoretically mutually exclusive. This chapter summarizes literature in relation to various concerns about immigrants' contribution towards economic growth, also consolidates immigrants' survey results which regularly conducted by Hong Kong Home Affairs Department and Immigration Department, and utilized Hong Kong census and by-census datasets to empirically compare the return rates of schooling and work experience between Chinese immigrants and natives over the past forty years, and investigate the causality between Hong Kong economic growth rates and these two return rates.

Citation

NG, M.C.-m. (2021), "Immigration and Economic Growth in Hong Kong", Fung, M.K. and Sergi, B.S. (Ed.) Modeling Economic Growth in Contemporary Hong Kong (Entrepreneurship and Global Economic Growth), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 47-69. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83909-936-620211005