Majority of Hong Kong residents in Greater Bay Area satisfied with living conditions: survey

More than half of Hong Kong residents living in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area are satisfied with their living conditions, according to research conducted by Our Hong Kong Foundation (OHKF) on talent flow in the area over the past years.

The OHKF has conducted three surveys, said Eric Fong, chair professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences in the University of Hong (HKU), with the foundation having commissioned Lingnan University to interview thousands of Hong Kong residents by telephone in April to understand their opinions on mainlanders working in Hong Kong, Sing Tao Daily (Hong Kong) reported Monday.

The foundation has surveyed more than 3,000 highly educated talents from the mainland staying in Hong Kong on their willingness to seek development in the city, as well as their opinion on the 2,500 Hong Kong residents who have been working in the Greater Bay Area for a long time, in cooperation with the HKU and Chinese University of Hong Kong, it was said.

More than 60% of the Hong Kong residents agree that it is "inevitable" for Hong Kong to introduce talents from the rest of the globalized world. Meanwhile, over half of them believed that the introduction of highly educated talents from the Chinese mainland will promote the development of Hong Kong's emerging industries and ease its labor shortages in some industries, the survey found.

The survey also revealed that more than half of Hong Kong residents in the Greater Bay Area are satisfied with their living conditions, where their socioeconomic status score reached 5.7, an increase from 4.6 in Hong Kong.

In addition, the median monthly salary in Hong Kong is about 18,000 Hong Kong dollars ($2296.8). More than 80 percent of Hong Kong residents working in the Chinese mainland earn at least 20,000 Hong Kong dollars($2552)a month, outperforming the income in the city, the survey found.