Description

Name: Jordan Zhao                 Country Selected:  Hong Kong

1.       Rationale – why will you research and profile this country?  What influenced your decision to choose this country?

I chose Hong Kong because of several of its uniquenesses: 

-          Hong Kong isn’t actually a real country (It’s a self administered region of China), and there are some political upheavals that are going on that could affect its population because in my opinion it could provoke immigration outwards (or possibly allow mainlanders to move in)

-          Hong Kong is well known for its high average life expectancy, amongst the top in the world

2.       Situation Analysis- What do you know right now about this country’s age demographics? What do you need to find out? What resources will you use to analyze this country’s situation?

I do know that Hong Kong’s average age is quite high, over 40 (43.2 to be exact).  But I do not know anything beyond this such as distribution of population by age groups (such as what % of population is over the age of 60 for example).   

I also would like to know the fertility rates (and avg birth vs deaths rates).  Additionally I want information regarding the workforce, such as unemployment numbers, average salary, retirement age, average savings, property ownership, etc, all of which would be important to put together a holistic picture of what’s going on in Hong Kong.

The sources I will be utilizing would be Hong Kong government’s data such as those on their labor force, and census.  Secondly, I would be checking any academic papers I can find on the internet, as well as those that could be published by reputable news organizations and consulting firms (Such as McKinsey).    I likely will be gathering the data first and possibly changing my thesis once I make sense of the data.

3.       Problem / Topic Statement – Write several sentences describing your understanding of the assignment, and what the central topic of your case study will be.

My understanding of the assignment:

Background:  In developed nations such as those in the West (and Hong Kong has historically been considered a developed country) that due to falling birth rates and increasing life expectancies, that a there will be a problem in the future where there will be significantly less people of working age, i.e. 25-59 (or 64) years old.   This poses significant challenges as society will need to cope with a shrinking workforce that will be asked to do more in terms of contributing to providing social and medical services (and social security) for a growing population of seniors, and facing possible GDP decline.  Our assignment is to propose intervention strategies to the government on how to meet these challenges in the future.

Central topic of my case study:  My case study will be focused specifically on Hong Kong, which falls under one of the countries that is imminently facing this population aging problem.   I am going to work on finding several root causes from the past that has made Hong Kong a risk for reaching the population aging crisis sooner than say Europe or North America.   I will also look at the future and try to propose to the government (and possibly industry CEOs) on mitigation strategies or fixes, both from an economic and policy perspective.  

4.       What questions will you try to answer in the case study?

I will be pouring through data that will likely lead me to ask additional questions so I won’t know precisely what questions to be asking but here are some major ones that I am thinking of right now:

-          The basic question of why there are lower fertility rates in developed countries such as:  Economic reasons?  Cultural change in not wanting to have kids?  -> I would also like to see if we can address the problem of low fertility rates in any meaningful way

-          Hong Kong specific issues that could meaningfully even further impact both fertility rates negatively, as well as moving Hong Kong into a population aging crisis mode sooner than the West

-          What other developed countries, if any, have done differently policy wise that could be implemented in Hong Kong (such as changes to immigration rules)

-          If there are no real meaningful ways to prevent Hong Kong (or the west for that matter of fact) from moving into a situation where a significant percent of the population is over the age of 65, then looking at mitigation strategics to cope with this such as increasing retirement age, reducing pensions, increasing taxes, etc.

5.       What concerns do you have with completing this assignment?

I have two concerns.  1) Not knowing the expected word limit or minimum word count. Ideally if we can get some direction on this that will be great as this will help me to figure out how much details I would be going into (or not needing to go into).  2) I suspect there is no meaningful way to really solve the population aging issue, otherwise there would have been plans by governments all over the world already.  Thus, what we would be proposing in a student assignment would be long shots.   Thus I wonder what % of our case study would be going over what we learned from research versus actually doing a proposal.  Some guidance on this will be great.