As published in The Straits Times
I refer to the Forum letter “A need to come together to find a solution to low fertility rate” (July 2).
I have raised the issue of how effective the strategy of encouraging married couples to have more children through monetary incentives is, and whether it is enough to reverse the declining total fertility rate or TFR (
Is Budget 2023 enough to boost Singapore’s fertility rate?, Feb 28).
For the existing strategy to work, a natural order of things must happen. Young adults must want to get married, married couples must want to have children and they must want to have more than two children.
A recent report by the Department of Statistics has revealed a significant finding that the rising proportion of singles is a key reason for Singapore’s baby drought (Rising share of singles is one main reason for Singapore’s great baby drought: Report, June 9). This finding reinforced the view that existing strategies – mainly monetary in nature – to encourage married couples to have more children will not be adequate to reverse the declining TFR.
More seniors have resigned themselves to the fact that some of their children do not want to have children after they get married, so they can adopt a dual-income, no-kids lifestyle. Some in the younger generation have the mindset that they do not want to bring a child into this troubling or stressful world to suffer.
We now have a triple whammy that the existing strategies cannot tackle completely.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done. We need to have another successful campaign (like the earlier Stop At Two ones) and an effective slogan to arrest the trend of more singles and younger generation married couples not wanting to have children.
Without effective strategies, the declining TFR is unlikely to improve. A TFR of 2.1 will continue to be a dream.
Andrew Tan Kok Chua