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Seeking the root causes of the population decline begins with understanding why couples have children. Or, in Singapore’s case, why couples choose not to.
The reasons are legion.
For starters, what sane parent-to-be wants to bring up a child who is going to have to face the rigours of one of the most competitive and stressful education systems in the world, the scholastic equivalent of the Hunger Games?
Who, stuck on the treadmill of economic survival, has time to take a breather to nurture the romances that form the building blocks of stable family units?
And perhaps it is here that the recent debate on income inequality becomes relevant: if you belong a low income group in Singapore, how are you going to afford to have children? Would you want to run the risk of your children falling into the same wage rut as you?
Ironically, the government’s “solution” of an open-door immigration policy could be part of the reason Singaporeans don’t feel that the conditions are right to have children.
Much of the economic hardship of today, rightly or wrongly, has been blamed on the government’s indiscriminate immigration policies. They are believed to have caused rising property prices, increased competition in the workforce, and an infrastructure buckling under the weight of the deluge.
- http://theonlinecitizen.com/2012/04/toc-editorial-population-paper-has-the-fundamentals-wrong/
The reasons are legion.
For starters, what sane parent-to-be wants to bring up a child who is going to have to face the rigours of one of the most competitive and stressful education systems in the world, the scholastic equivalent of the Hunger Games?
Who, stuck on the treadmill of economic survival, has time to take a breather to nurture the romances that form the building blocks of stable family units?
And perhaps it is here that the recent debate on income inequality becomes relevant: if you belong a low income group in Singapore, how are you going to afford to have children? Would you want to run the risk of your children falling into the same wage rut as you?
Ironically, the government’s “solution” of an open-door immigration policy could be part of the reason Singaporeans don’t feel that the conditions are right to have children.
Much of the economic hardship of today, rightly or wrongly, has been blamed on the government’s indiscriminate immigration policies. They are believed to have caused rising property prices, increased competition in the workforce, and an infrastructure buckling under the weight of the deluge.
- http://theonlinecitizen.com/2012/04/toc-editorial-population-paper-has-the-fundamentals-wrong/
