Introduction

We are a group of students from Pei Cai Secondary who are interested to find out the reasons why Singapore has been facing low birth rate in the recent years. At the same time, we will like to discuss about the likely consequences and come up with possible strategies to increase Singapore's low birth rate.

We have come out with questionnaire and conducted the survey at Singapore's largest suburban mall, the NEX mall.

Our objective is to interview 8-10 people who can help us in finding out the factors that have caused Singapore's low birth rate.

Background Information

Currently, according to our knowledge from textbooks and what we have heard from adults, we gathered that Singapore's low birth rate issues are most likely to be caused by a few factors.

The factors are better education level among the younger generations, economical development of Singapore, changing perceptions and beliefs held by the new families and increasing cost of raising a child.

As we all know, most women cannot conceive babies after they reach the age of 50, those who marry later or delay having children are left with fewer years to have babies. There are fewer marriages as more people choose to remain single nowadays, there will be fewer families and birth rates will fall. Increasingly, people in developed countries like Singapore prefer to have smaller families. This is partly due to the increasing number of working women who find it difficult to balance work and family and hence choose to have fewer children. As such, low birth rate in Singapore will be inevitable.

We have learnt in Geography lessons that combined low birth rate and low death rate in developed countries will result in low population growth. As time goes by, the number of ‘senior citizens’ will increase disproportionally and it will eventually lead to an aging population. This means that we will not only have more elderly to take care of but also relatively lesser working population adults. The money used by the government to ‘take care’ the senior citizens will have to be derived from taxes resulting in swelling tax burden on the working adults.

However, Singapore government has come up with many incentives to motivate more mothers to give birth!

One of the incentives is to reward newborns with 'baby bonus'.

The following monetary incentives can be found on the website.

https://www.babybonus.gov.sg/bbss/html/faq.html

Source:Textbook

Methodology

We went to Singapore’s largest suburban, NEX mall, on Thursday to look for potential interviewees.

In order to have a better representation of the whole population, we selectively approached 8 people from different walks of life. Their age range from 20 to 60. They were generally friendly and willing to answer our questions however, some were unable to give answers to all the questions asked.

The following are the questions:

1)Are you married? If yes, how old were you when you first got married?

2)Do you have any children? If yes, how many do you have? If no, do you intend to have any children in the near future? If yes, how many?

3)What are the reasons that you do not have children? ( If interviewee does not have a child) What are the reasons that you do not want to have more children? ( If interviewee has child/children)

4)Are you aware that Singapore has a low birth rate and its consequences?

5)What are the likely reasons do you think why the there is a low birth rate in Singapore now?

6)What do you think government can do to encourage more people to give birth?

Results and Analysis

We summarized our findings, instead of putting them in point form, for the flow and ease of reading.

( Please refer to the questionnaire under ‘Methodology’ for better understanding)

1st person

Age: 25

Occupation: Bank Teller

Highest education attained: Diploma

Gender: Female

She is not married as she is unable to find time to date. She wants to have 2 kids but the main constrain is the high cost of raising up a child in Singapore. It is too expensive. She’s fully aware that Singapore has a low birth rate and the consequences are aging population and higher tax burden. She responded that if costs were to be lower and lesser stress from work will probably let her have more time for setting up a family.

2nd person

Age: 66

Occupation: Cleaner

Highest education attained: Primary school

Gender: Female

She is married with 4 children and all have grown up. Back then, she stopped at 4 children as the house was not big enough for more. She would like to have more children as she feels that a bigger family will be more homely. She thinks that if government were to have more campaigns, it might be useful for the younger generation to give more birth as it had proven to be useful in the past.

3rd person

Age: 32

Occupation: Maid

Highest education attained: N.A

Gender: female

She is not married but intends to have 4 children. She supports the idea of having more children as they can help her earn more money in the future and take care of her when she is old. She is not aware of the low birth rate in Singapore but she thinks that government can give more money to its people to encourage more people to give birth.

4th person

Age: 35

Occupation: House wife

Highest education attained : Degree

Gender: Female

She is married with 2 children and she does not plan to have more children in future. Quoting from what she has said, ‘ 2 is good enough, too many will be to hard to control, they are so noisy and naughty nowadays.’ She’s fully aware of low birth rate in Singapore and she knows that it will lead to aging population which will lead heavier tax burden on the working adults. She feels that the incentives given by the government are insufficient. She thinks that if it is sufficient, then it will have already worked and the very fact that it has not been effective, then the amount of incentives should increase.

5th person

Age: 24

Occupation: Student

Highest education attained: Degree

Gender: Male

He is not married. He intends to have 2 children at most. The reason for him not to have more is because he thinks that he prefers to lead a more carefree life and children are expensive to raise in Singapore. He is aware of all the causes and consequences of Singapore’s low birth rate. He feels that it is the mentality of the population that needs to be changed so that they will have more children. He thinks that it is the hectic lifestyle that most of the younger adults lead nowadays that result in lesser time for setting up families.

6th person

Age: 61

Occupation: Retiree

Highest education attained: Primary School

Gender: Male

He is married and has 5 children. He thinks that having more children is good because it is an investment to him but having too many will be too expensive to raise in Singapore. He think that having more is important. His view is that government should give more money to encourage more people to give birth.

7th person

Age: 55

Occupation: Businessman

Highest education attained: Masters degree

Gender: Male

He is married and has 1 child. He thinks that more children is better because seeing them growing up, doing well and achieving their goals is a blessing to him. He said that he was too busy to have more children. He is fully aware of the low birth rate and its consequences. He stated that a smaller local population size might even cause the government to import more foreign talent hence increasing the competitiveness for the local citizens. He thinks that the government can encourage more people to give birth by giving more monetary incentives.

8th person

Age: 33

Occupation: Deliveryman

Highest education attained: Secondary School

Gender: Male

He is not married and not planning to have any children as it to expensive for him to afford. He thinks that government should give more money to encourage more people to give birth.

We have found out that most people interviewed are actually keen to have more children but did not give birth to more children because of the raising cost. As Singapore's cost of living is extremely high, it does not allow many Singaporeans, especially the financially unstable or poor, to have more children despite the fact that they would love to establish a bigger family. Some were reluctant to have children because they are more focused on their career. This was more obvious in the younger and more educated group of people, and women are the ones that are most likely to be affected. Most companies will not be willing to give maternity leave to female employees as this will disrupt their company's operations, as such the company might even discriminate female employees who are planning to give birth. Hence resulting in a disincentive for female employees to give birth to more babies. Men and women alike, as we have found out, are generally more than happy to have a bigger family, however, with some exception that the particular group of highly educated group of women may not want to settle down to form a family that early.

All in all, we could not conclude in detail and test our hypothesis as there are not enough data to support our findings. Should we have more time and resources, a more meaningful result could have been drawn.

Conclusion

There are several limitations in our research.

The sample size of the interviewees is too small for us to make any meaningful conclusion, however it is time consuming and hard to get more interviewees as not a lot of people are co-operative. There might also be a possibility that the interviewees are too shy or conservative to share their family problems or concerns.

JieQiang- This research helps me realise that the people in Singapore will give birth if the government gives them baby bonus or more money. I think that the best strategy to help is to give more money to the people.

WenJie- I enjoyed asking people about how they feel about Singapore birth rate and their thoughts about giving birth in Singapore. I think that more Singaporeans in Singapore will give birth if the government increases its incentives for the citizen. I will want to have 2 children in future, as too many will give me headache.

ZhaoHe- I enjoy the time when we were interviewing people as it is a new experience for myself. I think that more Singaporeans should give birth so that aging population will not happen and there will be a larger pool of talent. I will want to have 3 children so that they will companions during their childhoods. I think the best strategy to help Singaporeans is to give more incentives and lower the tax further more for 3rd and later child.