Speech by Minister Indranee Rajah at the Population Association of Singapore Conference 2024

PAS President, Professor Jean Yeung
PAS Governing Committee Members
Co-Directors of the NUS Centre for Family and Population Research
Distinguished speakers
Ladies and gentlemen 

It is a great pleasure to be with you here today. Last year, we inaugurated the Population Association Singapore’s Conference and I’m glad to see the good momentum has carried on. We are also here to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the Centre for Family and Population Research (CFPR).

I would like to touch on the importance of a sustainable population, the challenges we face in achieving it, and finally the role that research and academia can play in realising sustainable population and development.

A Sustainable Population

In the academic literature, “a sustainable population” refers to a population size that can be supported in the long-term. It is closely linked to the concept of “sustainable development”, which the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, describe as economic and social development that can meet people’s present needs, without compromising the needs of future generations.

Singapore also aims to have a sustainable population, in the sense of maintaining the right mix of citizens, residents and non-residents to meet our current needs, and the needs of our future generations of Singaporeans. Singapore’s key resource is its people, and having a sustainable population is key to realising our larger vision of Singapore being a thriving people, a dynamic economy, an inclusive society, and a resilient nation.

Our Population Challenges

However, we face unprecedented shifts even as we work towards this vision.

Foremost are the demographic shifts in our population. Like many other advanced societies, Singapore faces falling fertility rates and a rapidly ageing population.

These are global trends. Improvements in healthcare and education have led to longer lives and more opportunities for women in the workplace.

While we welcome the progress on these fronts, low fertility rates and an ageing population form the other side of the same coin.

Our 2023 resident Total Fertility Rate (TFR), at 0.97, has fallen below 1.0 for the very first time.

The resident old-age support ratio, which is the number of residents aged 20-64 per resident aged 65 and above, is expected to decrease from 3.7 today, to 2.7 in 2030.

These twin demographic challenges are complex and multi-faceted. They will also have significant implications. They have and will continue to shape our lived experiences here in Singapore.

Low fertility rates, along with higher life expectancies, mean an ageing population without a young base to support it. Our resources will be increasingly stretched given fewer working-aged persons.

Working adults will face increasing caregiving pressures on both ends, and may find this harder to balance alongside work.

Rising singlehood means more will eventually grapple with weaker familial networks as they age.

Fewer births also mean that we will face a shrinking workforce. It will be more challenging to maintain our dynamism, attract global businesses, and create opportunities for the next generation.

 So let me share how we are thinking about and tackling these challenges.

Opportunities and Continuing Support

First, ageing. Our population is getting older – by 2030, around 1 in 4 citizens will be aged 65 and above. We will face increasing care needs and more seniors living alone.  

But there are also opportunities. As life expectancy increases, seniors are able to have more productive years and remain in the workforce longer.

With their knowledge and expertise, longevity is an opportunity for seniors to contribute to our shrinking workforce. To better support this, we recently launched the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests (TG-FWAR), which will be useful for seniors who need additional flexibility to remain at work. We will also raise the retirement age from 63 to 64, and the re-employment age from 68 to 69 in 2026 to support older Singaporeans who wish to work longer.

Our ageing demographic shift is also taking place against a larger backdrop of technological development, which we can make use of to lead better lives.

For example, new technology can help us to reduce workload by streamlining more routine tasks. It also promises better quality of life and care for older persons. Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can better monitor and interpret data from wearable devices to facilitate community care. This can help us better address the needs of our ageing population.  

We also want to keep our seniors in good health physically, mentally and socially – whether or not they choose to remain in the workforce. We have recently put out a refreshed Action Plan for Successful Ageing in 2023 which sets out how we will support our seniors along three Cs:

• Care: Empowering seniors to take charge of their physical and mental well-being;

• Contribution: Enabling seniors to contribute their knowledge and experience to society, including through continued employment and volunteer work; and

• Connectedness: Supporting seniors with an inclusive built environment and digital landscape, helping them to stay connected to family and friends.

Fostering a Family-Friendly Society

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have been facing declining fertility for some time now. This is a global phenomenon which reflects the shifts in priorities, ambitions and concerns of our younger generations. Across the world, young people are delaying marriage, and even if they marry, they are delaying having children or not have children at all. They pursue other life goals and prefer to focus on their career and personal pursuits before they consider starting a family and raising children. They are also concerned about their future prospects, opportunities and challenges of juggling work and life.

 It is crucial therefore for us to dive deeper into the mindsets of our youths. Marriage and parenthood are ultimately personal decisions, but can we better understand the factors influencing these decisions?

When and how are marriage and parenthood aspirations are shaped? How do these aspirations evolve over the course of a person’s life? What are the key internal and external factors that strengthen or weaken these aspirations? What might help our young people to feel more empowered to pursue marriage and parenthood alongside, rather than after, their other life goals?

These are questions that we welcome the academic community to partner with us in studying further.

For Singaporeans who are ready to take the next step, the Government remains ready to provide support:

We have put in place a suite of marriage and parenthood policies to support our parents in areas such as housing, preschool, healthcare and finance. These have been progressively enhanced over the years.

One key area we are keen to address is the growing importance of work-life harmony in Singapore. In our 2021 Marriage & Parenthood Survey, we found that difficulties in managing work and family commitments was a key concern affecting the decisions on starting a family.

A recent study that both Prof Jean Yeung and Dr Senhu Wang from CFPR were involved in, also showed that Singaporeans valued mutual support with their partners to pursue both professional and personal goals. This was a factor that also shaped their decisions in having children.

So, we need to better reconcile work and family life to reduce the trade-offs that Singaporeans face when considering having children.

As mentioned in the Forward SG report, we are actively exploring how to increase paid parental leave to strengthen support for parents during their child’s infant years.

Apart from parental leave, Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs) are also an important enabler for parents to better manage their work and family commitments. As I mentioned earlier, the Tripartite Guidelines on FWA Requests will help facilitate discussions between employees and employers on FWA requests. Such processes will help to support Singaporeans in their ability to achieve work-life harmony, enabling them to maximise their potential at work while setting aside time for themselves and their loved ones.

We will continue to work closely with Tripartite Partners to foster more family-friendly workplaces and a conducive environment for Singaporeans who wish to start, grow and nurture their families.

 Collaborations with the Academic Community

Tackling our population challenges goes beyond the Government. It requires a whole-of-society effort with our community and tripartite partners, employers and the wider public. In particular, academics like yourselves, can contribute to the population policy space in a number of ways.  

First, academic research provides insight on the deeper factors underlying Singapore’s population challenges.

While the Government conducts its own studies, we do not have the same expertise as researchers who are at the forefront of your fields. Academic researchers can mount long-term studies, such as longitudinal studies, and utilise more sophisticated research methodologies or designs. These complement the Government’s policy studies.  

One example of a longitudinal study that we have gleaned useful insight from is GUSTO (Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes). GUSTO has tracked mothers and their children from birth to study the influence of conditions in pregnancy and early childhood on health and development of women and their children.

Previously, doctors only screened pregnant women assessed to be at high risk for gestational diabetes. Through GUSTO, it was found that routine gestational diabetes screening for all pregnant women detected almost twice as many cases, compared to a high-risk screening approach. A modelling study based on the GUSTO data also found that routine screening for gestational diabetes in all pregnant women is cost-effective for Singapore.  Now, we screen all pregnant women for gestational diabetes. 

We welcome more research into different demographic segments such as families and seniors, to help us better support them in different stages of their journey.

Second, research studies support our drive for evidence-based policymaking. Some studies provide an objective evaluation of the effectiveness of our policies, which in turn helps us to strengthen and improve them.

For example, Prof Yeung’s SG-LEADS (Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study) study, together with Dr Li Nanxun, showed positive effects of paternal involvement on marital satisfaction and child development.

It also found that fathers who took paternity leave became more involved in childcare, reducing the mothers’ role strains, parenting stress and promoting better family cohesion.

These findings have been useful to us as we continue considering how we can support fathers to play a bigger role in raising their children and encourage shared parental responsibility, for instance through our parental leave schemes.

We introduced the Government-Paid Paternity Leave scheme in 2013. Since then, we have made good progress, with utilisation increasing from 25% in 2013 to 53% in more recent cohorts. However, this also means that nearly half of our new fathers are still not tapping on their paternity leave entitlements. We understand that these are often due to barriers faced at the workplace, from concerns that their absence from work could affect their appraisals, to rather dated perspectives of gender norms among colleagues and supervisors. We welcome researchers to contribute your perspectives and ideas to help us address the key barriers fathers face in tapping on their paternal leave entitlements, particularly in sectors and companies where the take-up rate has been low.

Lastly, academics lend credible voices that can facilitate more informed public discussion on population issues.

We encourage academics in Singapore to contribute your voices to public discussions via commentaries, opinion pieces and other platforms. I remember Prof Tan Poh Lin’s commentary^[1] ↗ (opens in new tab) on Singaporean parents to be less demanding on themselves as parents. That is very important.

It is natural for our parents to have certain expectations and priorities when raising children. Yet this often adds to the stressors of being a parent. Academic excellence is good, but this does not define a child.

Such views and opinions from academics provide valuable perspectives on marriage and parenthood for the wider public.

I am grateful for researchers who can share their expertise and shed light on these complex issues such as population.

At the launch of CFPR in 2015, Minister Grace Fu highlighted that researchers make an impact by examining demographic issues in our Asian context, undertaking multidisciplinary research, and working closely with policy makers and the public.

This is indeed what CFPR has done over the last decade, and we hope that this will continue in the decades to come.  

Conclusion

So in conclusion, let me say that the Government will continue to encourage the expertise, ideas and policy-relevant research that academia has to offer and partner researchers on meaningful work and studies for policymaking. I hope that you will continue to share your research and findings, and co-develop potential ideas or solutions with us to improve the lives of our people. Thank you very much.

^[1] https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/baby-steps-young-people-say-anxieties-modern-life-dissuade-them- having-kids-can-singapore-fix-2359266 ↗ (opens in new tab)