香港兒童福祉與「起跑線」
Part of the new Lingnanian Opinion Column for HKET. Please follow link for full article.
Article
3 of the United Nations’ Convention of the Rights of the Child states that “in all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or
private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities
or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary
consideration”. Few would disagree that childhood
experiences have a profound affect not only on children’s current lives but
also on their future opportunities and prospects. If some children in society
systematically fall behind their peers in the core areas of their well-being,
this should be regarded as a situation in need of urgent attention even if
things are going well in other respects of economic and social development.
Indeed, writers across the Social Sciences have suggested that inequalities are much harder to justify if they prevent children from having a fair start to life. For instance, the Heckman equation, named after the popular American Economist and Nobel Laureate, suggests that public investment in educational resources for very young children aged below five promises particular ‘good value-for-money’ as it contributes positively to their early development of cognitive and social skills. If sustained by means of high quality education through to adulthood, such investments promise substantial gains to the economy by creating a more productive and valuable labour force.
Focussing on the positive freedoms of children and how their rights are being upheld in different contexts, the work of another Nobel Laureate and political philospher, Amartya Sen, argues that children’s chances to have a healthy start to live and access to high quality education to a large extent determines their capability to actively choose the lives that they have reason to value during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Indeed, since the economic circumstances to which children are born into are beyond their own control, merit-based justifications of inequality and ‘just deserts’ are less likely to convince if we are considering children rather than adults.
In a recent discussion paper for the United Nations
International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Stewart (2013:13) suggested “the
societal consequences of inequality are very different if particular
individuals move in and out of poverty or riches than if everyone stays in the
same place in the hierarchy”[1]. In
other words, persistent inequalities between the
most advantaged and disadvantaged should be perceived as a case of ‘inequity’, i.e.
a matter of fairness and social justice that governments and related
stakeholders have a responsibility to address. This is particularly the case as
far as children are concerned.
Although there is a strong economic and moral case to prioritise children in the distribution of scarce resources in society, the harsh reality is that few rich economies have so far managed to create truly “fair” circumstances for all its children. As such, international evidence has shown that students from the most disadvantaged families still tend to be more likely to be among the worst academic achievers than their peers from families with the highest socio-economic status.
Despite some positive overall gains, there remains a stubborn social gradient in healthy eating and physical activity in many rich countries meaning that children from the least advantaged family backgrounds continue to consume significantly less fruit and vegetables, and exercise less frequently for a total of at least 60 minutes per day as recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Not least, the least affluent children across rich economies are more likely to have very low life satisfaction, which is associated with multiple risk behaviors including bullying and being bullied at school[2].
There
is a dearth of systematic empirical evidence that would allow us to very easily
the extent to which the Hong Kong government manages to uphold the rights of
its children compared with other rich economies around the globe. However,
thanks to the Policy Innovation
Co-ordination Office (“PICO”) (formerly the Central Policy Unit), which recently supported
a cross-university research
project on the Trends and Implications of
Poverty and Social Disadvantages in Hong Kong, researchers are now in a
position where they can begin to piece together the complex puzzle of child opportunities and prospects in Hong Kong.
Although
preliminary, the data collected as part of this research suggests that children
in Hong Kong have a much higher chance to be among the least affluent if they
grow up in a single parent household or in a household with no working adult.
This finding may not be surprising, but speaks to the inability of the social
safety net in Hong Kong to protect children from less traditional households from
falling way behind their peers in terms of their income.
The
findings also suggest that rather than the level of education or combined
salaries, it is the parents’ material deprivation that determines the
likelihood for children to lack access to basic necessities, such as e.g. a
personal computer or a place to study in the home. In other words, being born
in disadvantaged circumstances still acts as a barrier for some children in
Hong Kong to live the same life as commonly perceived as ‘normal’ by a majority
of Hong Kong children.
Previous
research has shown that the parents and grandparents in less affluent households
in Hong Kong make considerable sacrifices to facilitate the best possible start
in life for their children. However, what these findings stress is that there
is a threshold below which these adult family members are no longer able to
shield their children from the negative consequences of severe material adult deprivation
in the households they grow up in.
Finally,
there also appears to be a link between the material and mental well-being of
children in Hong Kong. As such, it is a lack of access to basic child
necessities that is more likely to cause very low life satisfaction and a
disproportionately high frequency of mental health complaints, such as having
problems sleeping, worrying a lot, having stomach and back pain, among Hong
Kong children. These findings remain after controlling for their self-perceived
family relationships, their connectedness to teachers, and even their
experience of being bullied at school.
Much
more work needs to be done to fully understand the various ways in which the
determinants of well-being of the most disadvantaged children are interconnected.
However, what appears clear is that family background continues to play a considerable
role for the life chances of at least some of Hong Kong’s children. As long as the
future opportunities and prospects
of those Hong Kong children continue to be determined by the ‘lottery of
birth’, it is difficult to argue that Hong Kong’s economic and social policies
rise to the lofty ideals of the United Nations’ Convention of the Rights of the
Child.
In order to more successfully meet the needs of all its children, the Hong Kong government is well-advised to subscribe to the policy advice of international bodies, which have argued not only that governments should strive to promote healthy lifestyles and improve the educational achievements of the most disadvantaged children, but also that the incomes of the poorest households with children need to be better protected. This may not be a popular view given recent statements by the Financial Secretary (Hong Kong), which were meant to dampen the hopes for more government profligacy in social protection moving forward.
Given the dearth of comparative data in Hong Kong, it is also important to invest in further systematic research to enable better monitoring and measurement of child well-being in Hong Kong and its neighboring societies in the Big Bay area. Data sets that track the development of Hong Kong children across multiple dimensions of child well-being and across different life stages promise to be particularly valuable for generations of local policy makers and other stakeholders. While there are very good reasons for the Hong Kong government’s recent emphasis on STEAM subjects and industries, it is equally important to recognize the continued role of the Social Sciences in better understanding and shaping the life chances of her children as the future pillars of society.
[1] Stewart, F. (2013) Approaches
Towards Inequality and Inequity: Concepts, Measures and Policies. UNICEF
Office of Research Discussion Paper. Florence, Italy: UNICEF Office of
Research.
[2] UNICEF
(2016) Fairness For Children: A League
Table Of Inequality In Child Well-Being In Rich Countries. Innocenti Report Card 13. UNICEF
Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.