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Singapore Social Stratification and Mobility
During the 1970s and 1980s, economic development and
industrial
growth reduced poverty and income inequity and accelerated
upward
social mobility. Those with educational qualifications,
command
of English, and high-level technical or professional
skills
profited the most from the process.
In the late 1980s, the major indices of social
stratification
were education level, citizenship status, sector of the
economy
where employed, and number of employed persons in the
household.
Residents were sharply differentiated by the amount of
education
they had completed. In 1980 about 44 percent of the
population aged
25 and above had no educational qualifications, 38 percent
had
completed primary school, 15 percent secondary school, and
only 3.4
percent higher education. Those people born after 1970
were on
average much better educated than previous generations,
but
throughout the 1990s the work force will contain many
individuals
with limited education. Wages correlated fairly closely
with
educational attainment, although education in English
brought
higher salaries than Chinese education. Many benefits,
such as
access to a Housing and Development Board apartment, were
available
only to Singapore citizens, and only citizens and
permanent
residents were enrolled in the Central Provident Fund. In
1985, a
recession year when many foreign factory workers lost
their jobs
and residence permits, citizens made up 91 percent of the
work
force. Noncitizens were concentrated in the lower and in
the
highest wage levels, either as factory or service workers
on short-
term work permits, or as well-paid expatriate managers and
professionals. Wages were relatively higher in government
service
and government-owned corporations and in the capital
intensive and
largely foreign-owned export-oriented manufacturing
sector. They
were lower in the service, retail, and less highly
capitalized
light industrial, craft, and commercial sector, which was
dominated
by small Chinese firms
(see Wage Policies
, ch. 3). Wages
for
unskilled and semiskilled factory work and for unskilled
service
jobs were relatively low. Those who held such jobs, often
young
women in their teens and early twenties, were not entirely
self-
supporting but parts of households in which several
members worked
at low-paying jobs. Families of the poorly educated and
unskilled
improved their standard of living between 1970 and 1990 in
part
because full employment made it possible to pool the wages
of
several family members.
Economic growth and the associated increase in the
demand for
labor from 1960 to 1989 raised living standards and
sharply reduced
the incidence of poverty. A survey of living costs and
household
incomes in 1953-54 found 19 percent of all households to
be in
absolute poverty, meaning that their members did not have
enough to
eat. Application of the same standard in 1982-83 found 0.3
percent
of households in absolute poverty. A measure of moderate
poverty,
defined as adequate nutrition and shelter but little
discretionary
income and no savings, was devised by the Amalgamated
Union of
Public Employees in 1973. By that measure, 31 percent of
households
in 1972-73 were in moderate poverty, 15 percent in
1977-78, and 7
percent in 1982-83. Compared with other countries in the
region,
household incomes in Singapore were equitably distributed,
with
most households falling in the middle or lower middle
ranges of the
distribution.
The lowest income levels were those of single-person
households, representing the elderly, the disabled, and
those
without kin in Singapore. Apart from the childless elderly
and the
disabled, those in moderate poverty in the 1980s were
overwhelmingly working poor, holding unskilled jobs with
no
prospects for advancement. Such households typically had
only one
wage-earner with either primary education or no education
and lived
in rented housing and often a one-room or two-room Housing
and
Development Board apartment. Households with two or more
members
working, even at relatively low-paying jobs, were able to
contemplate purchasing a Housing and Development Board
apartment,
save money for emergencies, and devote more resources to
the
education of children.
Much of the alleviation of poverty and decrease in
income
inequality that took place in the 1970s and 1980s resulted
from the
increased participation of women in the work force. In
1985, 46
percent of all women above the age of fifteen held paid
employment;
68 percent of single women and 33 percent of married women
worked
outside the home. This trend was associated with women
marrying
later and having fewer children. One reason that more
households
attained an adequate standard of living in the 1980s was
that there
were more wives and unmarried daughters at work and fewer
young
children to be supported and looked after.
Surveys in the 1980s showed that most Singaporeans
described
themselves as middle class, justifying that status by
their
ownership of a Housing and Development Board apartment and
the
substantial and secure savings guaranteed by their Central
Provident Fund Account. Families in the middle-income
ranges
usually occupied two- or three-bedroom apartments that
they were
buying from the Housing and Development Board,
participated in one
or more formal associations, took an active part in
planning and
supervising their children's education, stocked their
apartments
with a range of consumer appliances, and had money to
spend on
hobbies, sports, or vacations. Automobile ownership was
not common,
and most middle-income Singaporeans used public
transportation.
Their mode of life rested on occupational skills and
educational
qualifications, secure employment in large, bureaucratic
government
or private organizations, or ownership of their own small
business.
The upper levels of the society were occupied by a
tripartite
elite of high-level civil servants, local managers and
professionals employed by foreign-owned multinational
corporations,
and wealthy Chinese businessmen who served as leaders in
the
associational world of the Chinese-speaking communities.
The first
two categories were marked by fluency in English,
university-level
education, often in Britain or the United States, and a
cosmopolitan outlook reinforced by foreign residence and
travel.
Many of the Chinese businessmen were entrepreneurs who
operated in
an exclusively Chinese setting and often had minimal
educational
qualifications. Their sons, however, often were graduates
of the
best secondary schools and of local or foreign
universities and
worked either as English-speaking representatives of their
fathers'
businesses, as civil servants, or as professionals. Few of
the
elite had inherited their status, and all were aware that
they
could not directly pass it along to their children. Having
themselves been upwardly mobile in a society more open to
individual effort than most in the region, they valued
that
society's stress on competition, individual mobility, and
success
through hard work. In the domestic sphere, they expressed
those
values by devoting much effort to the education of their
children.
Increased family incomes made possible by full
employment and
by such government programs as the construction and sale
of
apartments and the enrollment of nearly everyone in the
Central
Provident Fund are to be distinguished from upward
mobility, in
which individuals moved into more highly skilled and
highly paid
jobs and hence into higher social classes. The expansion
of
industry, banking, and of the ranks of civil servants
created many
high and mid-level positions that Singaporeans could
aspire to and
compete for. Residents from every ethnic community
regarded social
mobility as a common and accepted goal. Education was
regarded as
the best channel for upward mobility, and most families
tried to
encourage their children to do well in school and to
acquire
educational qualifications and certification. This put
severe
pressure on the school system and the children in it,
although, as
elsewhere, middle- and upper-income families had an
advantage in
maneuvering their offspring through the education system.
Individuals approached jobs with a keen appreciation
for their
potential for further mobility. Most large organizations,
whether
government or private, provided some training. Some
foreign-owned
enterprises, such as those in the oil industry, employed
large
numbers of skilled workers and ran extensive in-house
training
programs. The electronics assembly factories, in contrast,
offered
no prospects for advancement to their large numbers of
unskilled or
semiskilled assembly line workers. Small scale
enterprises, which
in the late 1980s often recruited along ethnic and
subethnic lines,
were associated with long working hours and low wages, but
sometimes offered the workers opportunity to learn a
skill, such as
automotive repair. Workers in such establishments commonly
advanced
by quitting and opening their own small firms, often after
years of
saving.
In a system that reflected both the great differences
in
educational attainment in the work force and the great
significance
attached to educational qualifications, most large
organizations,
public and private, made a sharp distinction between
mental and
manual labor, and movement from the lower to the higher
was very
difficult and rare. Lower level white-collar workers and
skilled
blue-collar workers often took advantage of opportunities
to
upgrade their occupational skills, either through training
offered
by the organization or through night school and short-term
courses
offered by educational or other government bodies.
Unskilled
workers in industry and service trades and employees in
small
Chinese firms saw few prospects for advancement and
considered
self-employment as their only hope for upward mobility.
Vending
food and consumer goods on the streets or operating a
cooked-food
stall, traditional entry points for entrepreneurs, had
been
practically eliminated by government action to tidy up the
environment and to limit the numbers of mobile hawkers who
obstructed traffic. Many Singapore economists felt that
the
successful modernization of the economy and the increases
both in
government regulation and in rents for shops and small
premises had
made it more difficult for the ambitious poor to get a
start. By
the late 1980s, Singapore's academics and political
leaders were
discussing the perceived shortage of entrepreneurs and
suggesting
solutions to the problem, although most discussion focused
on
industrial innovation and growth rather than the
commercial fields
in which most Singapore entrepreneurs had succeeded
(see Policies for the Future
, ch. 3).
Data as of December 1989
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