My family and other animals

Global uptick

Both Leung and Tomkinson are a part of a global uptick in pet ownership in the past decade — a trend fuelled by the social-distancing regulations brought on by the pandemic, when the need for companionship was at an all-time high.

The number of household pets in Hong Kong homes jumped from 1.14 million in 2018 to 1.19 million in 2022, according to a Euromonitor study published last year. Curiously, Hong Kong's fertility rate dropped from 1.07 to 0.8, i.e. the number of newborns a year was reduced from 53,000 to 32,600 over the same period of time.

If there was a connection between these two developments, it would suggest that pets might be replacing children for a number of people in Hong Kong.

Similar instances of pets increasingly being treated on a par with human families can be found elsewhere in the world. In 2017, SunTrust Banks — now Truist Bank — reported that one-third of the American millennials surveyed said that creating more room for their pets was the third-most important reason, after getting married and having children, for them to want to invest in a property. The survey also found that 42 percent of the same demographic, who were yet to buy a home, said their dog, or the plan to get one, would be a key factor influencing their decision to hop onto the property ladder.