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Singapore Population Control Policies
Since the mid-1960s, Singapore's government has
attempted to
control the country's rate of population growth with a
mixture of
publicity, exhortation, and material incentives and
disincentives.
Falling death rates, continued high birth rates, and
immigration
from peninsular Malaya during the decade from 1947 to 1957
produced
an annual growth rate of 4.4 percent, of which 3.4 percent
represented natural increase and 1.0 percent immigration.
The crude
birth rate peaked in 1957 at 42.7 per thousand. Beginning
in 1949,
family planning services were offered by the private
Singapore
Family Planning Association, which by 1960 was receiving
some
government funds and assistance. By 1965 the crude birth
rate was
29.5 per 1,000 and the annual rate of natural increase had
been
reduced to 2.5 percent. Singapore's government saw rapid
population
growth as a threat to living standards and political
stability, as
large numbers of children and young people threatened to
overwhelm
the schools, the medical services, and the ability of the
economy
to generate employment for them all. In the atmosphere of
crisis
after the 1965 separation from Malaysia, the government in
1966
established the Family Planning and Population Board,
which was
responsible for providing clinical services and public
education on
family planning.
Birth rates fell from 1957 to 1970, but then began to
rise as
women of the postwar baby boom reached child-bearing
years. The
government responded with policies intended to further
reduce the
birth rate. Abortion and voluntary sterilization were
legalized in
1970. Between 1969 and 1972, a set of policies known as
"population
disincentives" were instituted to raise the costs of
bearing third,
fourth, and subsequent children. Civil servants received
no paid
maternity leave for third and subsequent children;
maternity
hospitals charged progressively higher fees for each
additional
birth; and income tax deductions for all but the first two
children
were eliminated. Large families received no extra
consideration in
public housing assignments, and top priority in the
competition for
enrollment in the most desirable primary schools was given
to only
children and to children whose parents had been sterilized
before
the age of forty. Voluntary sterilization was rewarded by
seven
days of paid sick leave and by priority in the allocation
of such
public goods as housing and education. The policies were
accompanied by publicity campaigns urging parents to "Stop
at Two"
and arguing that large families threatened parents'
present
livelihood and future security. The penalties weighed more
heavily
on the poor, and were justified by the authorities as a
means of
encouraging the poor to concentrate their limited
resources on
adequately nurturing a few children who would be equipped
to rise
from poverty and become productive citizens.
Fertility declined throughout the 1970s, reaching the
replacement level of 1.006 in 1975, and thereafter
declining below
that level. With fertility below the replacement level,
the
population would after some fifty years begin to decline
unless
supplemented by immigration. In a manner familiar to
demographers,
Singapore's demographic transition to low levels of
population
growth accompanied increases in income, education, women's
participation in paid employment, and control of
infectious
diseases. It was impossible to separate the effects of
government
policies from the broader socioeconomic forces promoting
later
marriage and smaller families, but it was clear that in
Singapore
all the factors affecting population growth worked in the
same
direction. The government's policies and publicity
campaigns thus
probably hastened or reinforced fertility trends that
stemmed from
changes in economic and educational structures. By the
1980s,
Singapore's vital statistics resembled those of other
countries
with comparable income levels but without Singapore's
publicity
campaigns and elaborate array of administrative
incentives.
By the 1980s, the government had become concerned with
the low
rate of population growth and with the relative failure of
the most
highly educated citizens to have children. The failure of
female
university graduates to marry and bear children,
attributed in part
to the apparent preference of male university graduates
for less
highly educated wives, was singled out by Prime Minister
Lee Kuan
Yew in 1983 as a serious social problem. In 1984 the
government
acted to give preferential school admission to children
whose
mothers were university graduates, while offering grants
of
S$10,000 (for value of the
Singapore dollar--see Glossary)
to less
educated women who agreed to be sterilized after the birth
of their
second child. The government also established a Social
Development
Unit to act as matchmaker for unmarried university
graduates. The
policies, especially those affecting placement of children
in the
highly competitive Singapore schools, proved controversial
and
generally unpopular. In 1985 they were abandoned or
modified on the
grounds that they had not been effective at increasing the
fecundity of educated women.
In 1986 the government also decided to revamp its
family
planning program to reflect its identification of the low
birth
rate as one of the country's most serious problems. The
old family
planning slogan of "Stop at Two" was replaced by "Have
Three or
More, if You Can Afford It." A new package of incentives
for large
families reversed the earlier incentives for small
families. It
included tax rebates for third children, subsidies for
daycare,
priority in school enrollment for children from large
families,
priority in assignment of large families to Housing and
Development
Board apartments, extended sick leave for civil servants
to look
after sick children and up to four years' unpaid maternity
leave
for civil servants. Pregnant women were to be offered
increased
counseling to discourage "abortions of convenience" or
sterilization after the birth of one or two children.
Despite these
measures, the mid-1986 to mid-1987 total fertility rate
reached a
historic low of 1.44 children per woman, far short of the
replacement level of 2.1. The government reacted in
October 1987 by
urging Singaporeans not to "passively watch ourselves
going
extinct." The low birth rates reflected late marriages,
and the
Social Development Unit extended its matchmaking
activities to
those holding Advanced level (A-level) secondary
educational
qualifications as well as to university graduates
(see The School System
, this ch.). The government announced a public
relations
campaign to promote the joys of marriage and parenthood.
In March
1989, the government announced a S$20,000 tax rebate for
fourth
children born after January 1, 1988. The population
policies
demonstrated the government's assumption that its citizens
were
responsive to monetary incentives and to administrative
allocation
of the government's medical, educational, and housing
services.
Data as of December 1989
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