https://www.statista.com/statistics/268083/countries-with-the-lowest-fertility-rates/#0
When will sinkies become extinct?
When will sinkies become extinct?
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Singapore tops in lowest fertility rate
- Thread starter rectmobile
- Start date
Don't worry, the PAP government had imported many new citizens to help us boost the fertility rate and take away our jobs, women and houses. Kudos to PAP
Sir, the statistic is year 2017. I believe PAP has been importing FT for a number rofl years and still the birth rate is the lowest in the world. I guess it is not working well.
my uncle say joe say sinkie need to practice having sex in a confine space.
If your uncle want to have sex in confine space, pls remember to remove his adult diaper before doing it.
It's a myth that importing foreigners increases the fertility rate. Most of these foreigners come with families in tow.
What's more insidious is that importing middle-aged PMETS in large numbers actually aggravates – not alleviates – the aging population problem further down the road, as explained in this SDP article:
____________________________________
LOW BIRTHRATE AND PROPERTY MARKET BUSTS
Toh Beng Chye
Peter Drucker wrote in his book Peter Drucker On The Profession of Management that "Demography is the future that has already happened". Knowing the population dynamics of Japan's population, he says, will allow one to predict that the demand for adult diapers will exceed those of baby diapers and businesses should prepare accordingly. This development has been reported by Bloomberg.
Every financial bubble (stock market, property, credit, etc) has a set of fundamentals behind that drive the initial boom. During the dotcom bubble, there were many new business models which were highly innovative and exciting and promised great returns. There were trailblazers like Amazon.com which revolutionized book selling, Yahoo! which took away advertising revenues from print media, etc.
Unfortunately, irrational exuberance led to a great bubble in the stock market, which drive the Nasdaq up to 5132 in January 2000 but subsequently crashed to 1108 in October 2002.
Similarly, there are fundamental drivers in the property market which often lead to boom and bust. It is intuitive that the greatest demand from housing come from the group of individuals between the age of 30 to 50.
Individuals in their 30's are starting their family and aspire to buy a house or looking to upgrade to a bigger house to accommodate their growing families. Individuals in their 40s are usually at the peak of their earning power and will look to upgrade to bigger and more luxurious housing or investing in additional residential property.
Thus when these groups of individuals reach a peak in a country, they will kick start a boom in the property market. As the boom continues, investors and speculators will jump in and when things reach a fevered pitch, a bubble is formed.
Demand for housing will fall when the these groups of individuals age and their earning power reduces with retirement. A crash can be expected unless the population reproduces sufficiently to provide continued demand for housing.
Japan provides us with an excellent model to study from. The figures below are two population trends in Japan in 1990 (top chart) and 2010 (bottom chart). It clearly illustrates the dynamics as Japan's population peak age group was in the 40's in 1990 and increased to 60's in 2010.
Simply comparing housing boom-bust cycles with demographic trends can be problematic as there are many other factors that contribute to the housing-market problems, eg. excessively loose monetary policies, immigration policies, lack of restrictions and curbs on property speculations, etc.
It is debatable, however, whether the policymakers of China is willing or able to do anything about developments in their housing market.
Singapore's population dynamics is also very similar to 1990's Japan (see figure below). We will face a similar cycle in our property market unless our policymakers are willing to take unpopular measures to curb excessive speculation. We can also take steps to bolster the number in the 0-10 age group through increasing childbirth, etc.
Increasing the number of individuals in their 30s and 40's through immigration will increase the size of this age group and add to the demand for housing in the present (further adding to the boom) but does not prevent the subsequent crash.
Unfortunately, the Government has tried for many years to persuade our younger generation to have more children without much success.
I suspect one big reason for many couples not having children or delaying forming their families may be that young people are finding housing to be increasingly unaffordable.
If so, controlling excessive property speculation may be one key to our low birthrate problem. (This is why the SDP is presently working on an alternative housing policy for Singapore.)
Dr Toh Beng Chye is a medical doctor and is a member of SDP's Healthcare Advisory Panel.
The reasons for our low birth rates are clear to the policy makers: high cost of living, high education cost (after factoring in private tuition cost), long working hours, stagnant wages putting pressure on family size, inadequate social and family policies.
Likewise the solutions – more paid leave, flexi-hours, state-funded home help services, restructuring the economy to create a network of SMEs to help young parents – are also crystal clear. And many shining north European examples abound from where best practices may be adopted.
Whether there's a political will to ditch five decades of ideological conditioning against social spending and make the necessary changes is the real question.
Here's how the Nordic countries overcame the problem of low fertility rates:
---------------------------------------
Europe's baby bump holds lessons for Singapore
Couples will have more children if the State funds a big increase in paid leave and ensures enough home-help services
Ho Kwon Ping, For The Straits Times
The central issue about increasing Singapore's birth rate is whether we are prepared to take the perhaps radical steps which have enabled some developed Western countries to raise their birth rates from near terminal decline to more than replacement levels. Whether such steps, which largely involve creating a state-funded parental support ecosystem, are prohibitively expensive or a vital necessity, depends on whether we consider our birth rate to be a strategic imperative of the same priority as, say, national service, which is certainly not cheap either.
Ever since the mid-1960s when the Government launched a population control programme, our TFR, or total fertility rate, has been continually declining. For three decades, it has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman and, since 2003, a dozen years ago, it has been less than 1.3 births per woman.
We're hovering at the edge of the precipice, the so-called low-fertility trap, which is when a confluence of demographic, sociological and economic trends all converge and create a self-reinforcing, unstoppable spiral downwards. A slight uptick last year is encouraging news, but hardly a trend yet.
A few years ago, our resident population already started to shrink, although it has not been noticeable to most people because of the influx of foreign workers. Arresting this trend will not be easy: One Institute of Policy Studies finding was that even with an increased TFR to, say, 1.8 births per woman, which is quite optimistic and 50 per cent higher than at present, the resident population will still start to decline in the next 15 to 20 years.
We would need to take in about 20,000 new citizens per year on a net basis - meaning that it has to be more in reality to offset those migrating out of Singapore - to stem the decline and achieve simple zero population growth. This is about the size of a Marine Parade town each year. It is not small. And with anti-immigration sentiments persisting, if at least not increasing, in-migration cannot fill the population gap.
Surge in birth rates
HOWEVER, the demographic future of Singapore need not be as dismal as statistics suggest, nor should we be defeatist.
Birth rates in developed countries have somehow bottomed out and are starting to increase again. Demographers have discovered that when the Human Development Index or HDI increases, fertility rates decline but reach a level where it becomes a J curve and starts to rise again. The HDI is a more holistic measure of development beyond simply economic wealth which, in my last lecture, I advocated that Singapore adopt.
The negative correlation between rising HDI and falling birth rates has been observed for decades and was once thought to be inevitable. After all, it was a trend with virtually every country observed - as lifestyles improve, parents want fewer children.
But the study, first published in the magazine Nature in 2009, found that at some point as the HDI continues to advance, fertility starts to rise again. Some Western developed countries such as France, Sweden and Norway have seen fertility actually climbing back to replacement leve1s after decades of continuing decline. In the United States, fertility briefly surged above replacement level and is now hovering around there. New Zealand's TFR is now at replacement level.
What has caused this reversal in birth rates, and how can it be sustained? The prevailing theory is that this considerable and apparently sustained uptick in fertility rates is due to changing notions of gender roles within the family, work-life balance within careers, and government policies which support the ability of families to enjoy the natural happiness of raising children.
Studies in Europe have shown that before 1985, as more women went to work, couples have fewer children. Singapore's history corroborates this trend. But after 1985, the correlation reversed - countries where more women worked started to gradually have higher birth rates than those where more women stayed home. This has noticeably not happened in Singapore, where birth rates have stayed stubbornly low. Other East Asian economies like Hong Kong and Taiwan have similar trends as Singapore.
Sociologists say the data suggests that countries which recognise through concrete policies that young families today want more children only if both parents undertake equal responsibility for child rearing, and that children are well taken care of while both parents continue to engage in their careers, will get a positive response from young parents.
In other words, there is no need for campaigns to encourage people to have at least one and preferably two children, or to bribe them with cash grants to make more babies.
A two-child - or more - family is a natural desire of parents, but they are not procreating because the overall support environment is not conducive. Create a truly conducive environment and leave the rest to nature.
The State and fathers
IN FACT, there is a phenomenon in the behavioural sciences called motivation crowding theory, which when applied would mean that trying to use money to motivate what should be an intrinsic desire - that of having children - can have the perverse effect of reversing the desired result instead. So, creating a suitable environment (which cannot be monetised as easily) is much better than direct cash handouts for bearing children.
What might such an environment entail for us in Singapore? Well, such truly pro-family policies will not come cheap. Sweden grants each new parent two months of paid leave which cannot be transferred between each other, and another full year - 360 days - of leave which can be shared or transferred between themselves. Parents on leave are paid 80 per cent of their monthly salary for 80 per cent of the total leave allowable, with a cap which is roughly $6,500. The balance 20 per cent allowable leave is paid a lower flat rate.
One refinement is an interesting example of how family dynamics operate and how the state can nudge behaviour. Data showed that Swedish mothers used up on average 75 per cent of their total leave entitlement, but fathers only 25 per cent or two months, and pressured their wives to take up the majority of the shared leave.
This was resented and so the government - recognising who ultimately calls the shots when it comes to childbirth - will reduce the shared leave and give more to the father so that the pressure will be on them to use it or lose it. The State essentially helped mothers to nudge fathers to do their share of parenting - which was a key factor in convincing women to have more children.
This seems to have worked. Sweden's previously declining fertility rates have almost returned to replacement levels, and further refinements are likely to spur even higher growth. High-quality and inexpensive childcare facilities are also important and Sweden again leads in the provision of such services, even to the extent of having overnight centres for children of single parents who have to do shift work.
Sweden is just one example; other European countries pursuing the same policies have achieved similar results.
The takeaway for Singapore is that if we want the same birth rates as in Europe, we should work harder to promote work-life integration and gender equality within the family, so that for women, there is no trade-off between having a meaningful career and enjoying motherhood.
The Singapore Government is well aware of the success of these European countries, whose experts have visited Singapore and shared their experiences. But there seems to be either scepticism about the impact of long parental leave on fertility rates, or an unwillingness to confront the economic costs of such programmes. Employers, already reeling under the current clampdown on foreign workers, will be extremely unhappy about having to give a lot more paid leave to their child-bearing employees.
But as our fertility rates continue to plunge while Europe starts to see a reversal, it behooves us to perhaps consider whether the strategic dangers of not stemming a population decline may actually outweigh the economic costs.
We need to decisively conclude whether we are facing an issue of demographic security requiring the same kind of mindset shift which enabled national service to be implemented, despite the loss of economic productivity as well as cost to the State.
Furthermore, we may have to change the entire support system for the young family, beyond just increasing paternity and maternity leave. An entire ecosystem of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has to be created to undertake more of the work done by working parents. Liberalising the employment of domestic helpers will not necessarily help and there is even some evidence to suggest that it may be counterproductive. Young families with domestic maids have found themselves increasingly dependent on them to relieve their stress, but without increasing the intimacy of family life to encourage more children. We need a network of SMEs to which much housework, family meal preparation, and many other household chores can be outsourced. Reliable childcare facilities need to be more widespread, particularly in or near the workplace or home. Facilities and services serving the dependants of young working families - both the aged and the infants - will also go a long way to encourage Singapore families to want to enjoy having rather than being stressed by, more children.
But unless we recognise that our current policies are not working and learn from other countries which have indeed achieved success, we will simply go into genteel decline and bemoan our fate while not doing much about it.
Likewise the solutions – more paid leave, flexi-hours, state-funded home help services, restructuring the economy to create a network of SMEs to help young parents – are also crystal clear. And many shining north European examples abound from where best practices may be adopted.
Whether there's a political will to ditch five decades of ideological conditioning against social spending and make the necessary changes is the real question.
Here's how the Nordic countries overcame the problem of low fertility rates:
---------------------------------------
Europe's baby bump holds lessons for Singapore
Couples will have more children if the State funds a big increase in paid leave and ensures enough home-help services
Ho Kwon Ping, For The Straits Times
The central issue about increasing Singapore's birth rate is whether we are prepared to take the perhaps radical steps which have enabled some developed Western countries to raise their birth rates from near terminal decline to more than replacement levels. Whether such steps, which largely involve creating a state-funded parental support ecosystem, are prohibitively expensive or a vital necessity, depends on whether we consider our birth rate to be a strategic imperative of the same priority as, say, national service, which is certainly not cheap either.
Ever since the mid-1960s when the Government launched a population control programme, our TFR, or total fertility rate, has been continually declining. For three decades, it has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman and, since 2003, a dozen years ago, it has been less than 1.3 births per woman.
We're hovering at the edge of the precipice, the so-called low-fertility trap, which is when a confluence of demographic, sociological and economic trends all converge and create a self-reinforcing, unstoppable spiral downwards. A slight uptick last year is encouraging news, but hardly a trend yet.
A few years ago, our resident population already started to shrink, although it has not been noticeable to most people because of the influx of foreign workers. Arresting this trend will not be easy: One Institute of Policy Studies finding was that even with an increased TFR to, say, 1.8 births per woman, which is quite optimistic and 50 per cent higher than at present, the resident population will still start to decline in the next 15 to 20 years.
We would need to take in about 20,000 new citizens per year on a net basis - meaning that it has to be more in reality to offset those migrating out of Singapore - to stem the decline and achieve simple zero population growth. This is about the size of a Marine Parade town each year. It is not small. And with anti-immigration sentiments persisting, if at least not increasing, in-migration cannot fill the population gap.
Surge in birth rates
HOWEVER, the demographic future of Singapore need not be as dismal as statistics suggest, nor should we be defeatist.
Birth rates in developed countries have somehow bottomed out and are starting to increase again. Demographers have discovered that when the Human Development Index or HDI increases, fertility rates decline but reach a level where it becomes a J curve and starts to rise again. The HDI is a more holistic measure of development beyond simply economic wealth which, in my last lecture, I advocated that Singapore adopt.
The negative correlation between rising HDI and falling birth rates has been observed for decades and was once thought to be inevitable. After all, it was a trend with virtually every country observed - as lifestyles improve, parents want fewer children.
But the study, first published in the magazine Nature in 2009, found that at some point as the HDI continues to advance, fertility starts to rise again. Some Western developed countries such as France, Sweden and Norway have seen fertility actually climbing back to replacement leve1s after decades of continuing decline. In the United States, fertility briefly surged above replacement level and is now hovering around there. New Zealand's TFR is now at replacement level.
What has caused this reversal in birth rates, and how can it be sustained? The prevailing theory is that this considerable and apparently sustained uptick in fertility rates is due to changing notions of gender roles within the family, work-life balance within careers, and government policies which support the ability of families to enjoy the natural happiness of raising children.
Studies in Europe have shown that before 1985, as more women went to work, couples have fewer children. Singapore's history corroborates this trend. But after 1985, the correlation reversed - countries where more women worked started to gradually have higher birth rates than those where more women stayed home. This has noticeably not happened in Singapore, where birth rates have stayed stubbornly low. Other East Asian economies like Hong Kong and Taiwan have similar trends as Singapore.
Sociologists say the data suggests that countries which recognise through concrete policies that young families today want more children only if both parents undertake equal responsibility for child rearing, and that children are well taken care of while both parents continue to engage in their careers, will get a positive response from young parents.
In other words, there is no need for campaigns to encourage people to have at least one and preferably two children, or to bribe them with cash grants to make more babies.
A two-child - or more - family is a natural desire of parents, but they are not procreating because the overall support environment is not conducive. Create a truly conducive environment and leave the rest to nature.
The State and fathers
IN FACT, there is a phenomenon in the behavioural sciences called motivation crowding theory, which when applied would mean that trying to use money to motivate what should be an intrinsic desire - that of having children - can have the perverse effect of reversing the desired result instead. So, creating a suitable environment (which cannot be monetised as easily) is much better than direct cash handouts for bearing children.
What might such an environment entail for us in Singapore? Well, such truly pro-family policies will not come cheap. Sweden grants each new parent two months of paid leave which cannot be transferred between each other, and another full year - 360 days - of leave which can be shared or transferred between themselves. Parents on leave are paid 80 per cent of their monthly salary for 80 per cent of the total leave allowable, with a cap which is roughly $6,500. The balance 20 per cent allowable leave is paid a lower flat rate.
One refinement is an interesting example of how family dynamics operate and how the state can nudge behaviour. Data showed that Swedish mothers used up on average 75 per cent of their total leave entitlement, but fathers only 25 per cent or two months, and pressured their wives to take up the majority of the shared leave.
This was resented and so the government - recognising who ultimately calls the shots when it comes to childbirth - will reduce the shared leave and give more to the father so that the pressure will be on them to use it or lose it. The State essentially helped mothers to nudge fathers to do their share of parenting - which was a key factor in convincing women to have more children.
This seems to have worked. Sweden's previously declining fertility rates have almost returned to replacement levels, and further refinements are likely to spur even higher growth. High-quality and inexpensive childcare facilities are also important and Sweden again leads in the provision of such services, even to the extent of having overnight centres for children of single parents who have to do shift work.
Sweden is just one example; other European countries pursuing the same policies have achieved similar results.
The takeaway for Singapore is that if we want the same birth rates as in Europe, we should work harder to promote work-life integration and gender equality within the family, so that for women, there is no trade-off between having a meaningful career and enjoying motherhood.
The Singapore Government is well aware of the success of these European countries, whose experts have visited Singapore and shared their experiences. But there seems to be either scepticism about the impact of long parental leave on fertility rates, or an unwillingness to confront the economic costs of such programmes. Employers, already reeling under the current clampdown on foreign workers, will be extremely unhappy about having to give a lot more paid leave to their child-bearing employees.
But as our fertility rates continue to plunge while Europe starts to see a reversal, it behooves us to perhaps consider whether the strategic dangers of not stemming a population decline may actually outweigh the economic costs.
We need to decisively conclude whether we are facing an issue of demographic security requiring the same kind of mindset shift which enabled national service to be implemented, despite the loss of economic productivity as well as cost to the State.
Furthermore, we may have to change the entire support system for the young family, beyond just increasing paternity and maternity leave. An entire ecosystem of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has to be created to undertake more of the work done by working parents. Liberalising the employment of domestic helpers will not necessarily help and there is even some evidence to suggest that it may be counterproductive. Young families with domestic maids have found themselves increasingly dependent on them to relieve their stress, but without increasing the intimacy of family life to encourage more children. We need a network of SMEs to which much housework, family meal preparation, and many other household chores can be outsourced. Reliable childcare facilities need to be more widespread, particularly in or near the workplace or home. Facilities and services serving the dependants of young working families - both the aged and the infants - will also go a long way to encourage Singapore families to want to enjoy having rather than being stressed by, more children.
But unless we recognise that our current policies are not working and learn from other countries which have indeed achieved success, we will simply go into genteel decline and bemoan our fate while not doing much about it.
Foreign Talent fuck more that Sinkies!
Looking at the rate LTA is building MRT lines, I don't think PAP fucking cares about the fertility rate anymore. They will just invite any Tom, Dick or Harry to live on this island.
go to 4:33
You have your answer.
You have HUGE open spaces. So the people have a sense of optimism.
My 4th child was just born in Canada in September. Optimisim! Yes!
No matter who you vote, no matter who is in charge of Singapore, what policy shit....Sinkies will never have more babies in crowded sinkieland. It is mother nature's way of sending a signal that the land cannot support a bigger number of people.
My distant cousin bought a Yishun HDB double-story resale "mansion" with 3 bedrooms upstairs. His parents occupy one room, he and his wife occupy one room, and his 3 kids are cramped into the 3rd room. Totally horrible!
Eh when we say HUGE open spaces not talking about your HOUSE/HOME lah!
Talking about this.
Sinkies will not understand what HUGE OPEN space is. They go to a park like Marina bay and think wah big open space.
Frog in well.
When you drive from Calgary to Edmonton on the QEII highway, sometimes the road so straight for so long all you see in front is road go until horizon and flat land all around.
looks like the ski jump in calgary to me.
Ski jump is on the eastern side of the park. Whole complex is called Winsport. Also has ice skating rinks further west of the park.
It was very clear to me MM Lee was referring to the size of your home when he subsequently said "new home prices have gone up".
If "huge open spaces" means ski fields and grass fields, the fertility rate of Canadians would have hit the roof and you couldn't even possibly migrate there. But no, Canadians stopped replacing themselves back in 1972. Despite massive immigration over the years, the Canadian fertility rate is just 1.6 as at 2015.
Also, to update MM Lee posthumously, the US fertility rate is 1.84 as at 2015 and the latest reports suggest it is even lower in 2016. Let's not cheat ourselves. It is the price and the size of your home that matters when it comes to fertility rates. All those endless ski fields and grass fields count for nothing.
U.S. fertility rate plummets to new record low
October 5, 2017 (Population Research Institute) – The last year of the Obama administration saw the fertility rate fall to an all-time low.
According to recent data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the U.S. fertility rate sank to a record low of 62.0 births per 1,000 women of reproductive age in 2016.
This was a slight decrease from the 2015 fertility rate which stood at 62.5. The downward trend is not showing signs of stopping either. According to NCHS preliminary estimates, fertility slumped even lower to 61.5 in the first quarter of 2017.
I think LKY was referring to mountains and grass fields.
The phrase huge open spaces doesn't seem to me something you would use when talking about houses and homes.
Anyone else got an opinion?
I listened to the video again. Seriously if it is so clear in your mind that he meant huge open spaces as in within people homes? I feel really sorry for you
The phrase huge open spaces doesn't seem to me something you would use when talking about houses and homes.
Anyone else got an opinion?
I listened to the video again. Seriously if it is so clear in your mind that he meant huge open spaces as in within people homes? I feel really sorry for you
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my uncle say the figure just show that sinkie are finally getting smarter. He say many loser parents realised their life has been dragged down by their pampered prince and princess. He say one of his old time friend is very poor yet he need to work extra hard to buy a iphx for his princess and on debts for bogus uni cert on loans. My uncle say he dare not tell his friend your princess is hopeless and he understand his friend has not much option but to continue slog for his useless princess. My uncle also dare not tell him more to come as the useless princess will endup with shopping debts for him to clear. My uncle say he already has a ongoing shopping debt for his princess and he see the worse has yet to come when the princess graduate with the useless degree. My uncle predict that the debt will be higher when she starts to have income. He say he dare not disclose this prediction to his friend.
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my uncle say last time when he say to this friend now is just the tip of the iceberg his friend appear to be angry with him. He also say his friend refuse to acknowledge it to be his failure on the upbringing so he better not add fire to it. But my uncle say yet he always tell him his sob story. my uncle say he want to force me say the prediction to him meh.
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