Population planning in Singapore
This article needs to be updated.(January 2021) |
Population planning in Singapore has reflected various policies to both slow and boost the growth rate of
The first phase started with the launch of the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board in 1966 to aggressively promote family planning after Singapore faced "post-war food and housing shortages".
The government program "Stop-at-Two" was successful in achieving limited growth, but is also attributed to the initial decline of Singapore's population.
Limiting growth
Post war baby boom
Following World War II's end in 1945, the growth of Singapore's population was assessed to be unsustainable for its economic prospects; there were about 1 million born between the years of 1947 and 1964, with total live births increasing by 58%.[6]
During this period, the average annual growth rate was 4.4%, of which 1% was due to immigration. Singapore experienced its highest birth rate in 1957 at 42.7 per thousand individuals. The associated risks of overpopulation including resource depletion, environmental degradation, heightened unemployment, and increased costs of living prompted the government's growth-culling response.[6]
Overcrowding concerns
At the time of independence, many Singaporeans living in the
Despite their fall since 1957, birth rates in the 1960s were still perceived as high. On average, a baby was born every 11 minutes in 1965;
Introduction of family planning
Singapore's population expansion can be seen in the graph below:
Period | Growth |
---|---|
1947–1957 | 84.7% |
1957–1970 | 90.8% |
1970–1980 | 13.3% |
1980–1990 | 18.5% |
1990–2000 | 20.6% |
2000–2010 | 40.9% |
Establishment of the FPPB
In 1959, the People's Action Party came to power in the first election following the granting of Singapore's internal autonomy. In September 1965 the Minister of Health, Yong Nyuk Lin, submitted a white paper to Parliament, recommending a Five-year Mass Family Planning programme that would reduce the birth rate to 20.0 per thousand individuals by 1970. This initiative became known as the National Family Programme. A year later in 1966, the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board (SFPPB) was established based on the findings of the white paper, providing clinical services and public education on family planning.[7] Initially allocated a budget of $1 million SGD for the entire programme, the SFPPB faced a resistant population, but eventually serviced over 156,000. The Family Planning Association of Singapore was absorbed into the activities of the SFPPB.
Stop-at-Two
In the late 1960s, Singapore was a developing nation and had not yet undergone the demographic transition; though birth rates fell from 1957 to 1970, in 1970, birth rates rose as women who were themselves the product of the postwar baby boom reached maturity. Fearing that Singapore's growing population might overburden the developing economy, Lee started a vigorous Stop at Two family planning campaign. Abortion and sterilisation were legalised in 1970, and women were urged to get sterilised after their second child.[7][10]
The government also added a gradually increasing array of incentives and disincentives between 1968 and 1973, penalising parents for having more than two children, raising the per-child costs of each additional child:[7][11]
- In 1968 with the Employment Bill, female employees would not receive maternity leave for their fourth child or any subsequent children;[12]
- In April 1969, the accouchement fee of $10 charged at Government Maternity Hospitals was raised to $50 after the 3rd baby;[13]
- In 1972, these measures were introduced:[14][15]
- The incentives:
- Waiver of delivery charges in Government maternity hospitals for women who undergo sterilisation after delivery.
- For ward C-class patients who have undergone sterilisation, the ward charges are remitted.
- Government delivery charges are also waived if the husband undergoes sterilisation within a month after the wife delivered child.
- Patients undergoing sterilisation are granted medical leave on generous terms.
- The disincentives:
- Delivery charges in Government Hospitals increase with each additional child.
- No paid maternity leave is given for delivery of the fourth child and subsequent children.
- No priority is given to large families in the allocation of Housing and Development Board flats.
- The incentives:
- Updates to these earlier measures were announced and debated in Singapore Parliament on 24 October 1972 and came into effect on 1 August 1973:[16]
- Reduction of income tax relief to cover only the first three children;
- Reduction of paid maternity leave from three to two confinements;
- Lowering the priority for allocation of Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats for bigger families. Two or less have highest priority, four or more would have little priority;
- Progressive increment of childbirth fees charged in government hospitals based on birth order. These fees are waived if the man or woman underwent sterilisation;
Accouchement fees | A Ward | B Ward | C Ward |
1st Child | 250 | 100 | 50 |
2nd Child | 300 | 150 | 75 |
3rd Child | 350 | 150 | 100 |
4th Child | 400 | 250 | 200 |
5th Child | 400 | 300 |
- Third or fourth children were given lower priorities in education;
- Top priority in top-tier primary schools would be given only to children whose parents had been sterilised before the age of forty.
The Singapore Family Planning and Population Board created a large array of public education material for the Stop-at-Two campaign, in one of the early examples of the public
In addition to promoting just having two children, the government encouraged individuals to delay having their second child and to marry late, reinforcing the inevitable demographic transition. Other slogans and campaign material exhorted Singaporeans with such messages as:
- "Small Families – Brighter Future: Two is enough" (this message captioned a photo of two young girls)
- "The second can wait" (a mother and father are seen as being happy with one child)
- "Teenage marriagemeans rushing into problems: A happy marriage is worth waiting for"
- "One, Two: And that's ideal: Sterilisation, the best method for Family Limitation" (shown with a cartoon of two girls' faces)
- "Take your time to say 'yes'"[8]
- Small Family: Brighter Future
- "Please stop at two!" (a stork carries a four-member nuclear family)[19]
The Straits Times interviewed mothers who were sterilised in that era, noting it was common to get sterilised at a young age, citing a woman who had undergone
The campaign was known to target the uneducated in particular; Lee believed that, "
- We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two...we will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic. Lee Kuan Yew, 1969[20]
The government justified its social policy as a means of encouraging the poor to concentrate their limited resources on nurturing their existing children, making them more likely to be capable, productive citizens.[7] The government also had to respond to criticism that this policy favoured Chinese over minority races; Malays and Indians were stereotyped to have higher birth rates and bigger families than the Chinese, further fuelling accusations of eugenics.[21]
Demographic transition and the Graduate Mothers Scheme
As Singapore modernised in the 1970s, fertility continued to drop. The natural
Lee Kuan Yew was alarmed at the perceived demographic trend that educated women – most of all the college-educated – would be less likely to marry and procreate. Such a trend would run antithetical to his demographic policy, and part of this failure, Lee conjectured, was "the apparent preference of male university graduates for less highly educated wives". This trend was deemed in a 1983 speech as "a serious social problem".
Equal employment opportunities, yes, but we shouldn't get our women into jobs where they cannot, at the same time, be mothers...our most valuable asset is in the ability of our people, yet we are frittering away this asset through the
equal career opportunities for women. This has affected their traditional role ... as mothers, the creators and protectors of the next generation.— Lee Kuan Yew, "Talent for the future", 14 August 1983[10]
Lee's views reflected his earlier positions—in 1967, Lee was recorded as believing that "five percent" of a society's population, "who are more than ordinarily endowed physically and mentally," should be allocated the best of a country's limited resources to provide "a catalyst" for that society's progress. He theorized that such a policy for Singapore would "ensure that Singapore shall maintain its pre-eminent place" in Southeast Asia. Similar views shaped education policy and meritocracy in Singapore.[22]
However, the uproar over the proposal led to a swing of 12.9 percent against the People's Action Party government in the 1984 general election. In 1985, especially controversial portions of the policy that gave education and housing priorities to educated women were eventually abandoned or modified.[7][11]
A 1992 study noted that 61% of women giving birth had secondary education or higher, but this proportion dropped for third-order births (52%) and fourth-or-higher-order births (36%), supporting the idea that more children per capita continue to be born to women with less qualifications, and correspondingly, lower income.
Phase 2: Increase Fertility
Have-Three-or-More (if you can afford it)
In 1986 the Government of Singapore had recognised that falling birth rates were a serious problem and began to reverse its past policy of Stop-at-Two, encouraging higher birth rates instead. By 30 June of that year, the authorities had abolished the Family Planning and Population Board,[24] and by 1987, the total fertility rate had dropped to 1.44. That year, Goh Chok Tong announced a new slogan: Have Three or More (if you can afford it), announcing that the government now promoted a larger family size of three or more children for married couples who could afford them, and promoted "the joys of marriage and parenthood".[7] The new policy took into account Singapore's falling fertility rate and its increased proportion of the elderly, but was still concerned with the "disproportionate procreation" of the educated versus the uneducated, and discouraged having more than two children if the couple did not have sufficient income, to minimise the amount of welfare aid spent on such families.[23] The government also relaxed its immigration policies.[citation needed]
In October 1987, future Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, then a young Brigadier-General, exhorted Singaporeans to procreate rather than "passively watch ourselves going extinct".[25] United Press International noted the "baffled" reaction of parents, many who had grown up in an era where they were told that having more than two children was "antisocial". One parent commented, "are we being told to have more children for the sake of the country or for ourselves?"[26] Goh Chok Tong, despite the scepticism, remained optimistic that the population rate would be restored to the replacement rate by 1995. An NUS sociologist however, observed that Singapore had "a new breed of women" – one "involved in their careers [and] used to a certain amount of leisure and more material possessions" – and hence would not be as receptive to financial incentives as previous women of the 1960s and the 1970s. As of 2011[update], Singapore's birth rate has not yet been restored to replacement level.[27]
Policy comparisons between Have-Three-or-More and Stop-at-Two, starting 1988
This section is in prose. is available. (July 2014) |
- Mothers with a third child would get 750 SGD in child relief (factoring historic exchange rates, this was about $662 in 2010 US dollars). If a mother had three 'O'-level passes in one sitting, she would qualify for an enhanced child relief rebate (lowered from a threshold of five passes). Having a fourth child would qualify for enhanced child relief of 750 SGD plus 15% of the mother's income, up to 10000 SGD.
- All disincentives and penalties given in school registration to families with more than two children are to be removed; in the presence of competition, priority would be allocated to families with more than two children.
- Subsidies for each child in a government-run or government-approved child care centre
- Medisave could now be authorised for hospital costs of a third child (previously forbidden under the Stop at Two policy)
- Families with more than two children with a HDB flatof three rooms or higher would receive priority if they desired to upgrade to a larger flat
- "Abortions of convenience" discouraged, with compulsory abortion counselling
- Women undergoing sterilisation with less than three children would receive compulsory counselling
- Expansion of the SDU's role and authority; recognising that the low birth rate reflected late marriages, the SDU also wooed those with postsecondary A-level qualificationsrather than just college graduates
- Starting 1990, a tax rebate of 20,000 SGD (US$18,000 in 2010 dollars, factoring historic exchange rates) were given to mothers who had their second child before the age of 28
- Starting 1993, the sterilisation cash grant for lowly educated women was liberalised, allowing women to agree to use reversible
Statistics on Failure of Phase Two
Phase Two started in the early 1960s. The natural rate of increase (per 1,000 population) between the years of 1955–1960 (five years previous to phase two) was 35.4. Five to ten years later, the natural rate of increase decreased to 27.8.[28] Following that, 20 years later the natural rate of increase continued to decline. The natural rate of increase between the time period of 1980–1985, was 12.2, and several years after that, between the years of 2010–2015 the natural rate of increase, continued decreased to 4.6.[28] The lowest natural rate of increase seen in Singapore and according to the data of the United Nations (2017) will continue to decline. The rate of natural increase in Singapore is forecasted to decrease to 1.2 between the period of 2025–2030.[28]
Singapore population | |
Time period | Rate of natural increase |
1955–1960 | 35.4 |
1960–1965 | 27.8 |
1965–1970 | 19.7 |
1970–1975 | 16.8 |
1975–1980 | 11.8 |
1980–1985 | 12.2 |
1985–1990 | 13.1 |
1990–1995 | 13.4 |
1995–2000 | 9.7 |
2000–2005 | 6.7 |
2005–2010 | 5.6 |
2010–2015 | 4.6 |
Modern legacy and current practices
The modern SDU, renamed the
Different sources have offered differing judgments on the government policies' impact on the population structure of Singapore. While most agree that the policies have been very interventionist, comprehensive and broad, the Library of Congress Country Study argues "it is impossible to separate the effects of government policies from the broader socioeconomic forces promoting later marriage and smaller families," suggesting that the government could only work with or work against much more powerful natural demographic trends. To the researchers of the study, the methods used in 1987 to attempt to reverse the falling birth rate was a demonstration of "the government's [continued] assumption" that citizens were receptive towards monetary incentives and administrative allocation of social services when it came to family planning.[7]
However Saw Swee Hock, a statistician and demographer quoted in the Straits Times in 2008, argued the demographic transition "was rapid because of the government's strong population control measures," but also admitted that, "even without the Stop at Two policy, the [total fertility rate] would have gone below 2.1 due to [the demographic transition]."[18] When demographic transition statistics are examined – in 1960, the total fertility rate was approximately ~6 – Asian MetaCentre researcher Theresa Wong notes that Singaporean birth rates and death rates fell dramatically in a period that occurred over "much shorter time period than in Western countries," yet such a short time frame is also seen in other Southeast Asian countries, where family planning campaigns were much less aggressive.[10] According to Saw Swee Hock, "the measures were comprehensive and strong, but they weren't reversed quickly enough".
Though newer modern policies exhibit "signs that the government is beginning to recognise the ineffectiveness of a
purely monetary approach to increasing birth rates", a former civil servant noted that the government needs "to learn to fine-tune to the emotions rather than to dollars and cents. It should appeal more to the sense of fulfilment of having children". Such measures include promoting workplaces that encourage spending time with the family, and creating a "Romancing Singapore Campaign" that "[directly avoided being linked] to pro-children and pro-family initiatives," since "people get turned off" when the government appears to intervene in such intimate social affairs as marriage. However, this is still seen by some citizens as "trivialising" love and "emotional expression", which "should not be engineered".
See also
- Abortion in Singapore
- Demographics of Singapore
- Family planning
- Human population control
References
- ^ a b c "Singapore Family Planning & Population Board is established – Singapore History". eresources.nlb.gov.sg. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
- ^ a b "Singapore Population Control Policies – Flags, Maps, Economy, History, Climate, Natural Resources, Current Issues, International Agreements, Population, Social Statistics, Political System". photius.com. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
- ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
- ^ "SLOW Movement: ST: Two is not enough". chutzpah.typepad.com. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
- ^ Wong, Soo Mun Theresa; Yeoh, Saw Ai Brenda (June 2003). "Fertility and the family : an overview of pro-natalist population policies on Singapore". Asian Metacentre Research Paper Series.
- ^ a b ""Baby Boom Generation in Singapore and its Impact of Ageing"". Engineering and Technology International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences. 8: 809–817. 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Singapore: Population Control Policies". Library of Congress Country Studies (1989). Library of Congress. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
- ^ National Archives. Government of Singapore. Archived from the originalon 12 August 2011. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
- ISBN 978-0-8213-6951-7.
- ^ a b c d e f g Wong, Theresa; Brenda Yeoh (2003). "Fertility and the Family: An Overview of Pro-natalist Population Policies in Singapore" (PDF). Asian Metacentre Research Paper Series (12). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 July 2011. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
- ^ National Geographic Magazine. Archived from the originalon 19 December 2009. Retrieved 26 December 2009.
- ^ "Employment Bill – Singapore Statutes Online". sso.agc.gov.sg. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
- ^ "Third Annual Report of the Singapore Family Planning and …". nas.gov.sg. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
- ^ "Singapore Family Planning and Population Board Seventh …". nas.gov.sg. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
- ^ "New family plan incentives". eresources.nlb.gov.sg. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
- ^ "INCREASE OF ACCOUCHEMENT CHARGES FOR HIGHER ORDER OF DELIVERY (Statement by the Minister for Health)". Parliament of Singapore. 24 October 1972.
- ^ "Poster Collection". Singapore Collection. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library. Archived from the original on 6 September 2012. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
- ^ a b c d Toh, Mavis (24 August 2008). "ST: Two is not enough". The Straits Times. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
- ^ "National Family Planning Programme – Stop at Two". healthcare50.sg. Retrieved 12 August 2011.[permanent dead link]
- ^ ISBN 978-981-08-0819-8.
- ^ a b Webb, Sara (26 April 2006). "Pushing for babies: S'pore fights fertility decline". Reuters. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
- ^ Diane K. Mauzy, Robert Stephen Milne, Singapore politics under the People's Action Party (Routledge, 2002).
- ^ PMID 12291532. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
- ^ "Singapore Family Planning and Population Board (Repeal) Act". Singapore Statutes. Parliament of Singapore. Retrieved 12 August 2011.
- ^ "Singapore – Government". Country Studies Program. Library of Congress. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
- ^ Youngblood, Ruth (21 June 1987). " "'Stop at 2' Campaign Works Too Well; Singapore Urges New Baby Boom". United Press International. Retrieved 17 August 2011.
- ^ "Department of Statistics, Singapore. Infographic on Crude Birth Rate" (PDF). singstat.gov.sg. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 4 August 2014.
- ^ a b c "World Population Prospects – Population Division – United Nations". esa.un.org. Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
- ^ De Souza, Ca-Mie (17 August 2008). "Chinese community assured, new initiatives for Malay/Muslims". Channel NewsAsia. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
- ^ "Eugenics in Singapore". Your SDP. 9 November 2008. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
- ^ "Opening of Parliament". Singapore Parliamentary Proceedings. Parliament of Singapore. Archived from the original on 16 August 2011.