SINGAPORE: After MP Jasmin Lau (PAP-Ang Mo Kio) said in a recent podcast that Singaporeans aren’t having babies because they have ‘tasted a good and rich life at a young age,’ a local Reddit user appeared to agree with Ms Lau, but claimed that “all the more it’s the Government’s fault that our TFR (total fertility rate) is low.”
Last year, Singapore’s TFR fell to a historic low of .87. In 2023 and 2024, it was at 0.97. The rate should be around 2.1 for developed countries to maintain a stable population, a value known as the replacement level. The last year that Singapore’s TFR was at 2.1 was in 1975. Since 1976, it has been below replacement level.
Recently, a “Marriage and Parenthood Reset Workgroup” was launched in the hopes of raising the TFR.
In their r/Singapore post from earlier this week, the post author lamented higher living costs and shrinking house sizes in Singapore.
“It’s expensive to have kids, so that is a financial sacrifice. So why does it feel like the G isn’t trying to stop the rising CoL?” wrote u/DegreePitiful3496, adding that in older homes, “having an extra kid or two didn’t feel cramped.” In today’s smaller 3 and 4-room flats, having more than two people makes it feel more crowded.
“So who wanted to shrink houses?” they asked, opining that due to these conditions, people wouldn’t want to sacrifice what they have for the sake of having kids, and asking why there are no policies to favour people who have or want to have children.
“If anything, the PAP should be throwing policies out which heavily favour people who have/are having kids, such that their lifestyles are almost as good as the past,” the post author added.
Commenters, however, pushed back against the post author’s views, as well as the views stated by Ms Lau.
One said that the MP “fundamentally misses the point,” and that the reason why young people don’t want children is that they “do not foresee their lives improving.”
While older generations saw both GDP and wage growth, as well as plentiful jobs and affordable HDB flats, the situation has changed since then, to the point that university graduates are having trouble getting employed.
“Our parents’ generation had kids, even if they didn’t have much disposable income/savings, because they had the confidence that the future would be better than today,” the commenter added.
Another wrote: “It feels like when the G harps about how the people don’t want kids because they are comfortable with lifestyle and don’t want to sacrifice, they aren’t looking at the group who decided to have kids and are now burning a huge hole in their pocket, worried about getting retrenched and having to struggle to teach their kids after working hours to prep the kids for PSLE. These parents want to have one more child, but they just cannot.”
“It’s not that they should be pushing/forcing people to have kids, but they need to nurture the right environment for people to WANT to have kids. There are lots of people who want to have kids, but they don’t feel like they have the right finances/living arrangement/career trajectory/savings/etc to support it,” added another. /TISG
This article (Singaporean believes ‘it’s the government’s fault’ that birth rate is low) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.
