A Hong Kong biopharmaceutical company has offered a subsidy of HK$280,000 (US$35,850) to each of its employees to encourage them to start families while advancing their careers at the same time, in a bid to help boost the city’s birth rate.
Tony Cheng Sai-lung, the managing director of Merck Hong Kong & Macau, said on Friday that employees usually faced an overlap between the prime periods for career advancement and starting families.
“Freeze your eggs and free your career,” Cheng said. “That’s why throughout this initiative, we hope to give employees enough freedom and financial support to start their family yet advance their career all at once.”
The subsidies were part of the “Family Matters Initiative” launched by the Merck Group, NGO Primary Care Education Foundation and Bowtie Life Insurance Company.
“While encouraging the quality business environment of Hong Kong, private enterprises should also shoulder part of their social responsibility by encouraging their staff to organise their families and contribute to the long-term development of Hong Kong,” a joint statement by the three institutions said.
Employees could be reimbursed up to HK$280,000 for treatments such as in vitro fertilisation, egg freezing, ovulation induction and infertility treatment. Male employees would also be eligible for money to reimburse them for applicable treatments.
“All employees at Merck will be able to receive this subsidy as soon as their second day of their onboarding,” Cheng added.
The three organisations conducted a survey on family support needs early this year involving 200 employees and found that financial burden was the primary factor deterring Hongkongers from having children.
Nearly 80 per cent of the respondents believed that at least HK$6 million would be required to raise a child up to the age of 22.
The survey also found 67 per cent of respondents said a family income of more than HK$100,000 would be sufficient to meet childcare expenses.
Hong Kong had the lowest birth rate in the world as of late 2023, declining by 40 per cent over the last four years, with the number of babies born dropping to 32,500 in 2022 from 52,900 in 2019.
In an effort to boost the birth rate, the government announced a one-off cash bonus of HK$20,000 for each newborn in John Lee Ka-chiu’s 2023 policy address.
Authorities have already approved more than 16,000 applications for the HK$20,000 handouts since the policy rolled out in October.
In early 2024, the population also rose 0.4 per cent to just over 7.5 million, growing for the second year in a row following the Covid-19 crisis.
