Incentives introduced to support 'Three or more' policy
Yap Mui Teng looks at the results of Singapore's second population policy, since it was announced in 1987.
Eight years have passed since Mr. Goh Chok Tong, then First Deputy Prime Minister, announced Singapore's "Have three, or more if you can afford it" population policy in March 1987. This policy, which may be described as "selectively pro-natalist", represented a fundamental change in direction from the blanket "Stop at two" policy which had been in effect since 1972. Eight years down the road, how have Singaporeans responded to the call to have more children? Have they responded to the government's exhortation to have larger families as they earlier did to reduce family sizes?
The overall goal of the new population policy may be characterized as "population rejuvenation" in the broadest sense of the term. The policy was, and is, intended to address three anticipated trends concerning the future quantity and quality of the population arising from marriage and childbearing patterns: (a) a decline in population due to the failure of the parental generation to adequately replace themselves with equally large numbers of children ("below replacement" fertility), (b) a rapid increase in the proportion of the elderly, and a decline in the proportion of the young and working age population, as fewer children were born to replace the parental generation, and (c) a decline in the proportion of the talented as the less-educated marry and have more children than the better-educated (a "lop- sided" pattern of procreation).
The most recent projections published by the Ministry of Health show that Singapore's resident population will peak at 3.5 million in 2025, after which it is expected to decline gradually. In 2030, nearly one in four persons will be aged 60 or older, and there will be 43 elderly per 100 persons of working age (15-59). The government has been concerned that, if left unchecked, both the aging of the population and the "lop-sided" pattern of procreation could affect the future quality of the population and its ability to adapt to changing economic circumstances.
The new population policy attempts to redress these potentially disruptive trends by encouraging singles to get married and by promoting larger family sizes--at least three children, more if they can afford it--among those who are married. The latter is to compensate for those who do not marry and those who do not have any children, in order to attain the two-child average necessary for generational replacement. It is expected that by raising fertility to replacement level, and then maintaining this level of fertility indefinitely, the population will be maintained at a constant size with a balanced age structure, that is, with neither too many elderly or young to be supported.
As before, a series of incentives have been introduced to support the "three or more" policy. These policy measures may be classified as follows: (a) incentives to ease the financial burden of childbearing (tax rebates for the third and fourth child and income tax reliefs for up to four children), (b) incentives to ease the conflict between women's work and childbearing roles (a child care subsidy, tax rebates on maid levies; child care leave, no-pay leave and part-time work in the public sector), and (c) modification of earlier two-child incentives in line with the new policy (priority housing allocation and primary school registration for families with three instead of two children).
However, the sterilization cash grant scheme, an incentive for low-income, lowly-educated women to permanently limit their family sizes to no more than two children, was retained. This incentive was enhanced in 1993 by requiring a woman to only accept reversible contraceptive methods (instead of sterilization which is permanent), and by the addition of educational scholarship for her children. In 1990, an incentive for earlier childbearing (tax rebates for mothers giving birth to their second child before age 31) was also introduced, the purpose to counter the trend towards later childbearing. No direct incentives for marriage have been introduced to date.
The accompanying table shows the number of babies born annually since 1980. Ideally, analysis should be confined only to babies born to Singapore citizens and permanent residents at whom the incentives are targeted. However, in the absence of such publicly available data, information on all births occurring in Singapore are used. This is unlikely to significantly distort the overall trends as non-resident births are not expected to account for a large proportion of total births.
As the table shows, there have been more babies born annually since 1987 when the "three or more" policy was introduced. Prior to this, annual births had stabilized at about 40,000 to 42,000 except in 1986, when only 38,379 babies were born. The dip in 1986 is commonly attributed to the combined effects of Singapore's first economic recession in two decades and the "inauspicious" Year of the Tiger. Nearly 44,000 babies were born in 1987, followed by a sharp increase to 53,000 in 1988, an unusually high number, attributed to the coincidence of the "auspicious" Year of the Dragon with the number "88" which in the Cantonese dialect is homonymic with double prosperity. Since 1989, however, the number of babies born annually have remained at between 47,000 and 51,000, about 7-16 percent more than in 1987.
There have also been more third and fourth children born. The number of "third child" births has risen from about 6,000 in the first half of the 1980s and 7,000 in 1987 to about 9,000 in the period since. "Third child" now comprises 18 percent of total births compared with 16 percent in 1987. More importantly, the previous declining trend was reversed. Fourth births followed a similar falling and rising trend, though of a much smaller magnitude.
While there have been observable declines in both the number and proportion of "third child" births since 1990, they remain higher than in 1987. Whether these declines will be sustained remain to be seen, pending the availability of more data. No decline in fourth baby births have been observed to date, although future data again remains to be seen. A sustained increase or even leveling of fourth births will be interesting and deserves further analysis. It will be interesting to know, for example, whether this was due to larger family sizes among the better educated, who are most likely to be able to afford them, or whether these are attributable to the poor for whom the incentives could appear relatively more attractive.
More third children are also being born to mothers with secondary and higher qualifications. Secondary and better educated mothers accounted for more than 4,700 or 55 percent of third children born in 1993, compared with 1,736 or 26 percent in 1987. For fourth and subsequent births, the comparable figures were 1,238 or 42 per cent for 1993, up from 291 or 14 percent in 1987. These figures reflect, in part, the rising educational attainment of women in Singapore. Better educated women continue to be under-represented among the third and later births relative to all women giving birth each year.
In 1965 when Singapore became an independent nation, the average woman could expect to have more than four children by the end of her reproductive life. This declined to 2.1 by 1975 and further to about 1.6 by the mid-1980s. In 1986, the total fertility rate dropped to an unprecedented low of 1.4 children per woman. The introduction of the "three or more" policy was to redress this declining trend. At the time of the announcement of the new population policy in March 1987, then First Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Goh Chok Tong, announced that the government hoped the quarter-million women aged 25-34 would respond to the policy, and that if the package of incentives worked, Singaporeans would be replacing themselves by 1995.
Childbearing rates have increased among Singaporean women aged 25 and older. The total fertility rate rose from 1.62 in 1987 to 1.96 in 1988 and 1.87 in 1990 but appears to have stabilized at about 1.8 children per woman since 1991. If the events so far are any indication, the expectation that the total fertility rate would return to replacement level by 1995 may have been too optimistic. The total fertility rate remained below two children per woman even under the most favorable circumstances prevalent in 1988.
Women in Singapore appear to have responded to the government's call to have more children. Singaporean women as a group are having more children and more of them are having larger families as well. But the response also seems to be less enthusiastic than when called upon to reduce their family sizes in an earlier era. It is likely that the earlier response was made possible because of the convergence of individual and societal goals. It is too early yet to determine conclusively what the ultimate response will be, particularly when personal and societal goals are likely to be at odds.
Dr. Yap Mui Teng is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore.