What would a basic income cost in Hong Kong?
Pick a country, who gets it and how much a month. Everything is calculated on this device; nothing is sent anywhere.
Total cost per year
47.7 billion Hong Kong dollars
about 6.12 billion US dollars
7.5 million people × 530 Hong Kong dollars a month × 12 months
Compared with
- GDP (nominal) (2025)1.4%
Hong Kong in numbers
Hong Kong has a population of 7.5 million (2025) and a GDP of 3.33 trillion Hong Kong dollars (about 427 billion US dollars) in 2025.
Paying everyone 530 Hong Kong dollars a month would cost 47.7 billion Hong Kong dollars a year (about 6.12 billion US dollars), or 1.4% of GDP. The World Bank has no recent central government expense or tax figures for Hong Kong, so only GDP is compared.
Children only (under 18: 932,273) would cost 5.93 billion Hong Kong dollars a year (0.18% of GDP); adults only (18 and over: 6.57 million), 41.8 billion Hong Kong dollars (1.3%).
Default amount: 530 Hong Kong dollars a month is the World Bank's international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), converted into Hong Kong dollars with the World Bank's PPP conversion factor for household consumption (2025) and rounded to two significant figures. It is a reference point, not a policy proposal; change it above.
How to read this
This is the gross cost: the total paid out. The real net cost depends on which taxes fund it, which benefits or tax breaks it replaces and whether the payment is taxed. The population, budget and GDP figures are not all from the same year (see the sources).
Sources for the figures
- Population
- World Bank: population, total (SP.POP.TOTL), and population by single year of age 0 to 17 (SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN), 2025
- SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN
- Default amount
- World Bank: international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), June 2025 update
- World Bank: PPP conversion factor, household final consumption (PA.NUS.PRVT.PP), 2025
- Retrieved from the World Bank API on November 9, 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Government figures are central government, as a share of GDP in their own year, applied to the latest GDP.