Hong Kong’s wealth gap has widened due to an ageing population with a rise in the number of elderly people in poverty, a charity said on Wednesday.

An annual poverty report published by Oxfam Hong Kong has found that the wealthiest 10 percent of households earned 81.9 times more than the poorest in the first quarter of the year, up from 34.3 times in 2019.

The median monthly income for the poorest households was only HK$1,600, down more than half compared to before the pandemic, while the richest earned HK$131,100 on average.

“The income disparity is continuing to rise. One of the issues is that the number of poor elderly people is rising, especially those singleton and doubleton elderly families,” said Kalina Tsang, director general of Oxfam Hong Kong.

“Hong Kong is facing an ageing society, so this adds to the increase of poor elderly people.”

The report also pointed to official statistics showing that 20.2 percent of the population, or more than 1.39 million people, were living below the poverty line, surviving on less than half the city's median household income.

Among those considered “economically inactive”, including retirees, the poverty rate reached 33.1 percent in the first quarter.

More than 580,000 individuals aged 65 or above were living in poverty – most of them economically inactive.

Tsang called on the government to promote active ageing and help seniors to reintegrate into the job market.

“They have to establish a database to identify the elderly target group and how they can have more accurate policy to support these elderly people in Hong Kong,” she said.

“The government should devise enabling policies to create more job opportunities for the elderly people, if they are willing and able to participate in the market.”

She said the administration should make it easier for seniors to apply for its employment programme specifically for the elderly and those who are middle-aged, as well as lowering the threshold for elders to get subsidies under the Working Family Allowance Scheme.