By Moira Chan
26 April 2005

Population projection is an important exercise for all policy-makers because it is based on the periodic projections and adjustments that public infrastructure and public services are planned. Resources have to be set aside or found in order to ensure such needs are going to be met in the future. In other words, population projections determine longer-term policy planning.

Hong Kong’s population data points to a declining and aging population. The pressure on public health spending has already become obvious. While the HKSAR Government is preoccupied with how to reform healthcare financing, there is one obvious area of effort which appears to have been neglected – to ensure Hong Kong people are well informed about diet and lifestyle choices since what they eat, whether they smoke and how much exercise they do have a tremendous impact on health. This report shows how critical these aspects are to the good health of Hong Kong people and what policymakers
need to do.

This report is part of a series of studies Civic Exchange is conducting to assess the policy impacts arising from Hong Kong’s demographic trends. We are grateful to Dr. Moira Chan for helping us with this report. We are also grateful to Simon Ng for managing the population project as a whole, Carine Lai for layout, and Andrea Li for editing. The population project is funded by the Fan Family Charitable Trust. Without this support we would not have been able to embark on this important area of research. We wish to thank Mr. Henry Fan and Ms. Lily Fan for their personal support of our work.