As published in The Straits Times
I was stunned to read the article “More Singaporean deaths than births possible by first half of 2030s: Prime Minister’s Office” (Sept 23).
Perhaps we should have seen this coming, given Singapore’s persistently low total fertility rate (TFR), which dropped to a historic low of 0.97 in 2023.
While various commentators have cited the high cost of living and stress as some of the reasons for our low TFR, excessive workload could be one of the reasons as well.
According to a survey of 1,000 workers in Singapore that was carried out in April, 47 per cent of the workers in Singapore feel mentally or physically exhausted by their work (Exhausted from work? Nearly half of workers in Singapore polled feel the same, June 13).
The survey findings also revealed that exhaustion is one of the three symptoms of burnout, and that 27 per cent of workers cited excessive workload as the top reason for their burnout.
While I empathise with businesses that are grappling with higher costs, I am afraid our low fertility rate has become an existential issue that will have severe repercussions on not just the economy, but also maintaining the Singaporean core.
While we may need to rely on immigration to complement the local workforce, immigration is not a silver bullet for our demographic woes.
We can try to raise our fertility rate by better integrating our work-life policies, so that Singaporeans will not have to forgo having children, or having more children, for the sake of their careers.
This point was raised in 2015 by then S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore Ho Kwon Ping. In his lecture, titled Singapore: The Next 50 Years – Demography And Family, he said the “takeaway for Singapore is that if we want the same birth rates as in Europe, we should work harder to promote work-life integration and gender equality within the family, so that, for women, there is no trade-off between having a meaningful career and enjoying motherhood”.
It seems that nine years on, we have yet to reach the stage at which all Singaporean couples can have meaningful careers while also enjoying parenthood.
Mohan Tamilmaran