Baby, come back

Excerpt from article, "Baby, come back" on 12 July, ST

Twenty years have passed since Singapore introduced policies to encourage parenthood. But they have yet to produce the desired result, a situation that looks set to bring even more incentives.

On Wednesday, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew hinted that the Government is looking at giving free childcare and paid paternity leave - measures that depart from its longstanding frugal stance against dispensing freebies.

The possibility of paid paternity leave is also a shift in the country's traditionally matriarchal approach towards parenthood. Currently, fathers get three days' leave when their child is born while mothers get three months of paid maternity leave.
But the parenthood picture is dire.

Since 1976, or 32 years ago, Singaporeans have failed to produce enough babies to maintain the population.

On average, 2.1 births per woman are needed to prevent the population from shrinking in the long run. This works out to 60,000 babies a year.

But the numbers tend to hover below 40,000. Last year, 39,490 children were born here - just two-thirds of what is required. Even so, one-quarter of them have non-Singaporean fathers.
Demographers warn that the gap carries a risk.

Explaining in terms of fertility rates, they note that Singapore's resident total fertility rate is now 1.29.

Although it is above the record low of 1.26 in 2003, it is still below 1.3, a figure that holds 'a special mathematical portent' for them, says an article in The New York Times.
'At that rate, a country's population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover,' it says.

What this means is the population would have shrunk past the point of no return.

It is a future that could be hastened by a double whammy that will never go away.
One is the greying of the baby-boomers who form about a quarter of the population.
Their ageing will see deaths exceeding births in 20 years' time, predicts statistician Paul Cheung, Singapore's former chief statistician who is now director of the United Nations Statistics Division.

The other is the mounting number of younger Singaporeans heading overseas to live and work.

xueying@sph.com.sg

Recently, the government has again come to this very important topic of procreation. Singporeans are still not having enough babies. We learnt about the reasons for the low birth rate in Social Studies. Check out the current birthrate and you'll realise we've not even hit the replacement rate. This will lead to problems like ageing population and the loss of a dynamic workforce.

MM Lee said perhaps we need to adopt the Swedish way to encourage births. What is the Swedish way?

What will make Singporeans have more babies? Do share about your thoughts under comments.