The Death Of Social Mobility

''Yesterday, at a department store, I noticed that one of the salesgirls at the cosmetics counter was my former student," says a professor at a prominent private university in Taipei. ''Think about that: a college graduate selling makeup and living on commissions. That used to be the kind of job a high-school student did." (The source, fearing repercussions from supervisors, asked that the university not be named.)

All this is happening amid the most robust economic growth in a decade. But the fruits of today's good times are enjoyed disproportionately by the rich, widening societal divisions. At Tin Shui Wai, a series of disturbing incidents portray a community in crisis. The latest: the murder-suicide by a distraught mother who threw her two children off a balcony and then jumped 24 floors to her own death in October. The woman, a Chinese immigrant with a history of mental illness, had been living on welfare. The father had been hospitalized for cancer treatment. The suicide note she left reportedly said that she didn't think she could cope raising the children on her own.

The tragedy has triggered two debates: one specific to the new town and another on Hong Kong's escalating poverty problem.

Area residents say high transportation costs, a dearth of local jobs and the government's policy of assigning all new immigrants from mainland China flats in its public-housing estates have rendered it a slum. Last week Hong Kong's Labor Secretary Matthew Cheung met lawmakers, social activists and residents to pledge comprehensive strategies that will address local woes, to be released by January. As the South China Morning Post reported, he endured an emotional meeting with residents. Among them: a pregnant woman who tossed coins on the ground and declared: ''Giving out coin by coin by coin, the government treats us like beggars."

Not coincidentally, Hong Kong announced last week that it soon will begin consultations aimed at drafting the territory's first statutory minimum-wage law, reversing its long-held position that artificial salary floors could undermine the city's competitiveness. Earlier in October, Chief Executive Donald Tsang said in his annual policy address that the city must ''facilitate social mobility, help the poor, create job opportunities and promote a caring culture," a sideways acknowledgment that the three-year economic boom has disproportionately benefited the rich.

Even in Singapore, where high growth has created the best labor market among the tigers, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned earlier in the year that the city's income gap posed problems. During a September meeting with National University of Singapore students, he reportedly took a question from one expressing fear that he might fall from the middle class as the city increasingly catered to ''foreigners, tourists and the rich." Lee responded by saying that Singapore ''has to be a place where the vast majority ... enjoys a high quality of life," otherwise voters would abandon his party.