Powered by glolg
Display Preferences Most Recent Entries Chatterbox Blog Links Site Statistics Category Tags About Me, Myself and Gilbert XML RSS Feed
Sunday, Jan 23, 2011 - 21:41 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- -
Birth of Queens (Part One)

"Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night."

- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake
(a.k.a. the "To see a world in a grain of sand" poem)


Making use of downtime during the running of experiments...

It seems as if we've set a new record, one which is less palatable than the one I encountered last week - quoting The Straits Times, "Singapore's fertility rate hits record low of 1.16". How bad is this? Well, it means that each generation will be approximately 60% the size of the last, and if this trend keeps up, in a couple of hundred years the resident (i.e. citizen + permanent resident [PR]) population will be only about 1% of the current figures. Compound interest works both ways.

So it seems, we're screwed - or more precisely, not screwed.

The Weekly Standard doesn't pull its punches: "...Despite all the incentives, all of the public campaigns, all of the pleading, the average woman in Singapore can barely be bothered to have a single child."

I would have said "I told you so", but that would be damning myself with faint praise indeed, since it appears that few had realistically expected any other outcome.

Let us examine the main govermental responses:

  1. Firstly, the continued importation of PRs and foreigners, whose numbers have increased from about 271k to 533k and 729k to 1.254M respectively from 1999 to 2009, which has allowed Singapore's total population to increase from 4 million to 5 million in the same period.

    Put in this way, a low fertility rate isn't an issue - simply top up the tank, so to speak, whenever numbers get low. We aren't about to run out of willing immigrants from China and India, among other countries, anytime soon.

    One common objection is that, even disregarding cultural clashes, we will simply be passing on the buck to future generations if the newly-minted citizens and PRs don't reproduce more after they settle here either (they probably don't, looking at the demographics)

    It is relatively easy to create new citizens, but (thankfully) harder to get rid of them; simply adding people without fixing the fertility rate issue would lead to a situation where a huge (and increasing) proportion of the population is elderly, which can't be indefinitely held off by importing yet more youngsters, since our residential capacity is limited.

    This is however mitigated by Singapore's pre-paid CPF (so the taxation burden in order to upkeep the elderly should not completely crush the smaller working population), and willingness to raise the retirement age to 68 (and perhaps beyond) - not that developed countries have much choice either.

    Still, it would be kinda sad if Singapore becomes a massive nursing home in a few generations...

    [N.B. This issue has become a real sticking point recently, with local commentators being none too kind to a British PR who questioned why his son was not granted a similar status upon marriage to a local; the general consensus was that he had held off getting PR for his son at the same time as himself, so that his son would not be a second-generation PR and therefore liable for national service.

    Interestingly, another common response was that this was simply a bad time to apply for PR, what with the elections coming up - which may well be true]

  2. Secondly, give incentives. These are mainly in the form of A) ready cash B) matching funds and C) tax rebates. [N.B. Some are already of the opinion that the current payouts are generous enough]

    A) is S$4000 each for the first and second babies, and S$6000 each for the third and fourth babies. To put this into perspective, delivery itself would probably cost a thousand out-of-pocket, and assuming a no-frills S$100 per month for the essentials (we're not talking maids, pre-school etc here), this would be exhausted in a few years.

    B) is a matching contribution of up to S$6000 for the first and second babies, S$12000 for the third and fourth, and S$18000 for further babies. Now we're talking! Of course, poorer families who don't have free cash to dump into the Children Development Account (CDA) won't get much from this...

    More interestingly, what happens to the CDA? Well, once the kid turns 7, the balance will be transferred to his Post-Secondary Education Account (PSEA). This account can only be drawn upon to pay for the fees of local universities and other post-secondary education. So, if the kid happens to be either not academically-inclined, or so academically-inclined as to qualify for the Ivy League (but doesn't feel like signing some government scholarship bond or other), sorry!

    In this case, the PSEA funds will be transferred to, guess where, the kid's CPF Ordinary Account once he turns thirty. Entry-level HDB flats probably won't hit the million-dollar mark by then, so the ten thousand bucks or so should still come in useful.

    C) is a tax rebate of S$10000/S$20000 per child. Poorer citizens earning less than S$20000 a year don't pay tax at all, so this doesn't help them. Better-off citizens sometimes don't pay enough to reap the full rebates either - back-of-the-envelope calculations show that a combined income of some S$5k to S$6k is needed, for gross taxes to reach S$20000 over seven years (the period over which the rebate can be claimed), with an even higher income required if the births come together (which is common)

  3. Pay mostly lip-service. Technically, employers can't fire someone for being frequently pregnant (or old, or gay, or female, for that matter). However, they can just fire them for no reason at all (reorganization, anyone?). Even government-employed teachers forfeit their bonuses, it seems.



Having said all that, it must be repeated that many developed countries face the same issue. As far as the "Swiss standard of living" aspiration goes, Switzerland's fertility rate has held firm between 1.4 to 1.6 in the past few decades; Japan's currently at 1.3, and given their reluctance to embrace immigration, it remains to be seen how they will dig themselves out of that.

Sweden is one of the rare success stories, having pulled their way to near-replacement rates, but 16 months of paid leave (shared between both parents) will do that to couples, I suppose. Their welfare structure is the opposite of Singapore's, however, but whatever form welfare takes, the money comes from somewhere. One year off with benefits? Can! Pay almost 60% of your income in taxes lor!



You have shamed your honoured ancestors
(Source: Somewhere on the Internet)


Also, if to-be kids felt that they had a chance of finding a bona-fide "Superior Chinese Mother" (as has been blazing a trail on Facebook and the web in general recently), then the birthrate may well be attributed to teeny spermatozoa swimming upcurrent against the flow as fast as their tiny tails can take them. What's the fascination with the piano and violin among ultra-overachievers anyway? [N.B. The New York Times came out with a thought-provoking dissent - and the real bottom line is that Dr. Amy Chua is laughing all the way to the bank with all the free publicity]

Come to think of it, I got a very watered-down version of The Tiger (Grand)Mother Method in my childhood, and the truth is that for some purposes, such as regurgitating paragraphs in Chinese, dogged repetition does work.

Not having much of a background in my other subjects, my grandmother resorted to insisting on my reading of a certain number of pages of each textbook each day (e.g. 1 to 30 on Day One, 31 to 60 on Day Two, repeat when the pages are exhausted). In response, I soon perfected the art of sleight of hand, furtively swapping the texts out for more informative ones whenever the opportunity presented itself. Household honour and harmony was thereby maintained.

[To be continued...]



comments (0) - email - share - print - direct link
trackbacks (0) - trackback url


Next: That Day Again


Related Posts:
On Bonuses
On Economics
Economics Thus Far
Come Ten Twenty Issues
Algo Brüno Championleagueo
Back to top

Copyright © 2006-2025 GLYS. All Rights Reserved.