Vincent Yu / AP

62-year-old Cheng Man Wai lies in the 16 square foot cage that he calls home, in Hong Kong on Jan. 25, 2013.

By Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

Vincent Yu / AP

A car passes luxury houses on Victoria Peak, Hong Kong's most exclusive neighborhood, on Feb. 7, 2013.

Published at 10:27 a.m. ET: For many of the richest people in Hong Kong, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, home is a mansion with an expansive view from the heights of Victoria Peak. For some of the poorest, like Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage.

The 67-year-old former butcher pays 1,300 Hong Kong dollars ($167) a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.

Vincent Yu / AP

77-year-old Yeung Ying Biu sits inside his cage home on Jan. 25, 2013.

Some 100,000 people in the former British colony live in what's known as inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization, a social welfare group. The category also includes apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks. 

Forced by skyrocketing housing prices to live in cramped, dirty and unsafe conditions, their plight also highlights one of the biggest headaches facing Hong Kong's unpopular Beijing-backed leader: growing public rage over the city's housing crisis. Read the full story.

Vincent Yu / AP

63-year-old Lee Tat-fong walks in a corridor while her two grandchildren -- Amy, 9, and Steven, 13 -- sit in their 50-square-foot room in Hong Kong on Jan. 25, 2013. Lee, like many poor residents, has applied for public housing but faces years of waiting. Nearly three-quarters of 500 low-income families questioned by Oxfam Hong Kong in a recent survey had been on the list for more than 4 years without being offered a flat.

Vincent Yu / AP

77-year-old Yeung Ying Biu eats next to his cage on Jan. 25, 2013. The cage homes date from the 1950s, when they catered mostly to single men coming in from mainland China

Related:

'Coffin' apartments offer wooden box homes for the living

Manila's hidden spaces: Life on the margins in a crowded megacity

Woman leaps to her death as housing disputes surge in China

Alkis Konstantinidis / EPA

Pensioners shout slogans during a protest against the government's austerity measures and pension cuts in central Athens, Greece, on July 12, 2012.

Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP - Getty Images

Pensioners march towards the Health Ministry in Athens on July 12, 2012.

Despite an ongoing heatwave, hundreds of pensioners marched in Athens and other Greek cities on Thursday to protest against the government's austerity measures and pension cuts, Agence France Presse reports.

Related content:

• Greek unemployment hits record high
• Analysis: Greece too far behind to copy Irish bailout model
• Greeks returning deposits to banks
• 'Martyr for Greece': Retiree's suicide sparks violent protests

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Ana Carolina Fernandes / Reuters

Maria Gomes Valentim, 114, lies on her bed in Carangola May 19, 2011. A Brazilian great-great grandmother, Valentim is the world's oldest living person at the age of 114 and 313 days, said Guinness World Records on Wednesday.

Here's the full story.

Ralph Orlowski / Getty Images

A pig named Felix and an elderly woman encounter each other in a lift at a senior care facility in Essen, Germany on April 12.

Ralph Orlowski / Getty Images

Physiotherapist Daan Vermeulen (standing) helps an elderly woman to pet his pig Felix in a senior care facility on April 12 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

Ralph Orlowski / Getty Images

An elderly woman feeds Felix in a senior care facility in Gelsenkirchen.

Ralph Orlowski / Getty Images

Daan Vermeulen guides his pig Felix into a car at a senior care facility in Gelsenkirchen.

A pig named 'Felix' has been trained by physiotherapist Daan Vermeulen to provide emotional therapy for the elderly and for handicapped children, Getty Images photographer Ralph Orlowski reports. Vermeulen claims contact with the pig stimulates curiosity, activity and even alertness among elderly people and helps them to awaken from the passivity that often sets in as they become older. Vermeulen says he helps those patients who react with fear to the pig to channel the emotion into a positive experience.

John Amis / AP

Besse Cooper, 114, right, receives a kiss from her grandson Paul Cooper, 42, during a ceremony in which Guinness World Records recognizes her as the word's oldest living person, at the nursing home where she lives, Thursday, March 10, in Monroe, Ga.

Like world record photos?  Check out our Guinness World Records slideshow where you can see the widest mouth, the shortest cow, the most tattooed woman and much, much more.

John Amis / AP

Besse Cooper, 114, naps on the way to lunch while her daughter in law Edith Cooper, 72, and nurse Terry Cobb, left, talk about the amount of attention Besse is getting after a ceremony in which Guinness World Records recognized her as the word's oldest living person.

China's population grew to 1.34 billion people last year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced Monday, marking a modest jump for a massive population and leading experts to suggest China may relax its generation-old one-child policy.

Andy Wong / AP

A baby sits in a carriage while a woman buys vegetables at a stall near a residential building in Beijing, China on Feb. 28.

The figure of 1.3410 billion, which is preliminary and based on a sample survey, shows China added about 6.3 million people last year, up from 1.3347 billion at the end of 2009.

Since 1979, the government has limited families in cities to one child and rural parents to two to control its population.

"China's population now is mainly growing because people are living longer, not because people are having lots of babies," said Cai Yong, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an expert on China's population.

Andy Wong / AP

An elderly woman checks a receipt next to the groceries she bought outside a shop in Beijing, China on Feb. 27.

China's population growth has been contracting since 1987 and the U.S. Census Bureau has projected it will peak at slightly less than 1.4 billion in 2026, with India overtaking China as the world's most populous nation in 2025.

Read the full story.