Hong Kong has become a more unequal city over the past decade, according to new government figures.

The city's wealth gap now outstrips that of Singapore, the United Kingdom and Australia as well as other major cities notorious for inequality such as Washington and New York City, says the Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department. In 2011, the city's Gini coefficient—an index from 0 to 1 that measures the wealth gap—rose to 0.537, up from 0.525 in 2001. It's a figure that exceeds various estimates even of inequality across the border in mainland China.

This latest figure comes as the city's leader, career civil servant Donald Tsang, prepares to step down after seven years in office that critics say were hamstrung by inertia and lack of action to help the poor. Mr. Tsang—who also faces a flurry of public outrage over his use of taxpayer money to fund lavish overseas trips—will leave office on June 30. His successor, Leung Chun-ying, has pledged to do more for Hong Kong's poorest, including restarting the city's poverty commission, which was disbanded under Mr. Tsang in 2007.

"As front-line social workers, we see life has become more difficult [under Mr. Tsang]," says Christine Fang, who leads the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, citing exorbitant housing prices and rising inflation. "Their livelihood has worsened while they see that society has prospered," she says of Hong Kong's poor. "That's why we can sense the antagonism between those who have and those who have not."

The thousands of people living in Hong Kong's notorious "cage homes" are some of the more searing images associated with the city's poverty. But the middle class has also been squeezed, analysts say, as housing prices have surpassed even the levels seen during the city's 1997 bubble. In recent years, as travel restrictions for mainland Chinese have loosened, rows of swanky storefronts catering to such tourists have cropped up across the city, including glittering temples to luxury handbags and jewelry, spurring resentment among Hong Kongers who feel they've been left out of the city's economic boom.

Today, Hong Kong's median home price is 12.6 times the annual median household income, according to research group Demographia. By contrast, that figure is 5.1 in the United Kingdom and just 3.0 in the U.S.

The government was quick this week to downplay the latest evidence of the widening wealth gap, noting that after factoring in social benefits and taxes, the city's Gini coefficient was 0.475, a figure unchanged from 2006. It also cited demographic factors as an explanation for the rise in income disparity, noting that as the population has aged, the number of households without active income has increased.

In explaining Hong Kong's entrenched wealth gap, analysts cite the economy's overwhelming reliance on the services sector, particularly finance, which has created wealth for some but failed to provide significant numbers of well-paying jobs across the board. While income grew 60% among the city's top 10% of earners between 2001-2010, it dropped by 20% among those in the bottom 10%.

-- Te-Ping Chen. Follow her on Twitter @tepingchen

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