Transcription
Singapore is still one of the safest, wealthiest, and most stable countries in the world. So, why does life feel increasingly hard to hold together? For many Singaporeans, the pressure is no longer just about getting ahead. It's about staying afloat. Housing feels further out of reach, raising children feels harder to justify, and even people doing reasonably well increasingly describe themselves as tired, anxious, and stretched. What does that mean for the future Singaporeans believe they can realistically build?
Welcome to Lens on Singapore. I'm Clarissa Montero. Today, I'm joined by Professor Wei Jun Jean Yeung, director of social sciences at A*STAR's Institute for Human Development and Potential, and Associate Professor Walter Theseira from the Singapore University of Social Sciences. Welcome to both of you.
Thank you.
I'm going to start by asking you a question I like to call Clarissa's coffee question. If we were sitting down for coffee somewhere as friends, what would you candidly tell me if I asked you why so many Singaporeans feel life is difficult? Walter, why don't you start?
Yeah, I think I mean that's that's kind of a very broad or big question, but um
That's why we're having coffee. [laughter]
Okay, okay. May- maybe for for me, I think it comes down to this, right? I think we live in a society where everybody thinks they're part of the middle class, but the middle class is actually huge. On the one hand, you've got people at the really upper end of the middle class, uh living very wealthy and privileged lives, who nonetheless solidly believe they're in middle class, right? And then of course on the other end you've got people who are actually struggling to, for example, get out of rental housing, make sure their kids actually complete complete formal education, get a degree, and so on. Uh and because we have such a broad conception of the middle class, I think this actually puts a lot of stress on actually everybody in the system, um all the way down, right? From the top end who are struggling to basically maintain what they have to people in the middle who see people at the top end expressing all these struggles and also thinking to themselves, well, but you know, shouldn't I also be aiming for a condo or landed or something? Isn't that part of the middle class as well? And maybe part of this is is also because the gap between the top end of the middle class and the truly wealthy in Singapore is frankly ridiculous, right? You know, you've got the people who have multiple good class bungalows and things like that. And so when you see all of this inequality, I think that's part of what contributes to actually these the this the feeling of insecurity and unease, basically.
So Jean, if if that is if if Walter is saying that that is the case, that there's perhaps too wide of what is perceived as a middle class, how do you fix something like that?
Yeah, I I think, you know, Singapore is one of the most successful developmental story in the world.
Yeah.
And it continues to prosper. What it's showing is for all the modern societies, the economic prosperity doesn't automatically translate into a psychological security. And that people don't automatically just feel they're better. Because as a society progress, uh people's aspiration and expectation of what sort of standard they need to have, and what is defined in a society as success has changed. I I what we are seeing now is uh in Singapore uh know that they they people are not just asking for basic survival of food and housing. They are there's a very high demand of what success needs to look like for middle class and and others too who are trying to stay ahead too.
So are we putting the stress on ourselves? It's not really the economy per se but we ourselves are putting these stresses on ourselves as our aspirations grow.
I think to some extent they are. And it has to do with the cultural context and probably institutional institution that hasn't quite kept up with all this development that is going on over the last you know six decades or so.
Walter would you say that a lot of the stress and the comes mainly from financial pressure? Financial pressure not that we not not earning money but we want more stuff.
I think I want to pick up a bit on this team of basically a moving societal target
Mhm.
and maybe put it in a bit of context so that we can understand maybe a bit more about why many families today feel as if they're actually sliding backwards.
Sure.
And I think that's because when when we look at our grandparents generation you know in an era where a lot of people don't even have the chance to complete primary school you're completing and that's progress. So you have all of this but when you look at your job prospects career and so on you suddenly realize what's next right? What's next because when you look at the private property which historically a lot of people thought of as upgrading that is still very limited to the top few percent of the population. You look at jobs it's very clear that having a degree does not make you a special person in the job market anymore. And so, coming back to this issue of um what people conceive of as success, for example. I mean, certainly, if you measure success as uh something that by due to constraints in the system, only the top 10, 15% can have, then you need to be in that group. And in fact, if you're not just uh pedaling very hard, you know, you you're you're going to fall behind. You have got, as we mentioned at the start, you know, all of these security, uh income, and so on, social protection that we have in Singapore that you wouldn't have in a much less developed country. But, uh it doesn't feel like success, you know, even though you have all that.
It doesn't feel like success because it's not special. Everyone else has it. What What is the driver of that stress?
I think culturally, it you know, Asian culture, particularly Chinese culture, the Confucian society always emphasize achievement
Right.
through education, uh through hard work. And the countries uh in Europe and in in um United States, for example, you have competition, certainly, but not so intense. Uh here, uh you know, in the competition starts very early. I think that's one reason why people young people feel uh stressed out. Cultural definition of success uh really uh is driving a lot of people think they have to work
Mhm.
harder harder than they should.
But, what are we chasing? Are we chasing a promotion, or are we are we chasing a bigger paycheck? Are we chasing the opportunity to have a better life?
I think a lot of us are actually chasing some idea of security, having some assurance, you know, that uh if there are downturns in the job market, if the challenges that my children face, for example, in school or development, whatever, that things will be okay. But, I think the the issue is that that notion of security. Uh one factor is that to achieve it, it seems that you might need an enormous amount of assets and capabilities, right? Because, for example, if you define security as ensuring that uh our children, even if they suffer some setbacks along the way, will be able to find a place for themselves in society and have families of their own. If your children have some significant setbacks like developmental issues and so on, then security might might require a huge amount of money and resources. That's one problem, right? Or if we think about uh security in our own careers, of course uh the rapid pace of technological change, especially in the last couple of years of AI and so on, it makes everybody feel that there is no such thing as security in your job. I think it is that sense uh of insecurity which is plaguing many people.
Okay, let's move on to something that I think is getting a lot of attention right now, and that is Singapore's falling birth rates. I've had conversations about it with ministers, with with everyone, including early education school operators. So, Jean, you've studied family formation, long-term life decisions extensively. Why do we have, could you explain to us why we have such a low fertility rate right now, and is it signaling something deeper?
I think here is the case where you know, woman's role has changed so much. Um they want actually both family and uh careers. And there's still a lot of barriers uh both from the cultural expectation to them to carry out a lot of family responsibility by themselves, and from the structural aspect where the employers thinks they they they should be putting in more work uh more hours at work. And in Singapore, 80% of the young couples are dual earners. So, that's a Singapore reality we have to accept. People thinks that they need two income to be able to support the kind of life
of people need those two incomes.
or need two income. But, at the same time, you also want uh young people to have babies and get married. And uh studies shows that the aspiration for getting married and having babies are still quite high. They do want to ideally two children and uh be married and so on.
those children too very late.
Reality is expenses are high. And the gender roles are such that uh men are not participating enough yet, although increasing, uh but so that women feels like there's not much benefit for them to get married or have children. And so, all this is creating a disequilibrium.
So, if you're saying that um a lot of couples, a lot of women still want to have children.
That's what the study shows on over and over again.
But, they are delaying it. So, I'm wondering whether at some point that delay becomes abandonment.
Absolutely. So, the reason um statistics shows that there increasing number of uh children being born to women who are age 35 and above. But, the uh reality is after 35, the probability of uh fecundity and having a baby then becomes much lower. So, increasingly we're hearing uh societies supporting more on the uh artificial uh reproductive techniques.
Which is expensive. Which goes to your points about
expensive and here too um you know, it's expensive to the extent that very few couples can do that.
So from an economy point of view, Altha, what needs to change so that we can make things more conducive for these young couples to have these children earlier?
Right. I mean, I think when you look at the issue of low fertility in Singapore, there are some things we share in common with with other societies with low fertility. But perhaps what makes it a bit more challenging in the local context, one is as Jean mentioned, is this whole gender norms and you might say the bias towards expecting that women actually shoulder a very heavy share of family responsibility. I think the other issue, which is maybe more structural to to Singapore, would be I I think the sense that a lot of uh stability in terms of finances, career planning, and children's education planning needs to be in place before they can contemplate having children. All of that is not going to be in place until for many people your early 30s maybe at the most optimistic. And I think that's the issue. And so I think when you look at some of the barriers we need to work on in Singapore, um first let's look at maybe what the government has some control over and can try to do something about. And I would also say have been trying to do something about. Uh here we have this whole BTO problem, right? Which is that in Singapore for for most of us the only realistic option for young couple is to buy a government subsidized flat. But we all know that that comes with a pretty long timeline. You have to ballot for it, it has to be built, and then you can move in. So that's one issue. Government's working on this, but what makes it challenging is that people want choice. They don't just want the first flat the government offers to them. They say, "But you know, when I'm looking at my BTO, I want the ideal BTO with great potential for capital appreciation, blah blah blah. And understandable why they want this, but this just adds more and more time to your timeline. So, that's one, right? And finding that job where you have that stability can be extraordinarily difficult. So, with all of this in place, it's no wonder that um fertility is greatly delayed, but I think we can also see that there has to be a lot more, I think, policy action to try to release the BTO constraint where possible. Again, work it's being worked on. Try to see what possibility there is for more flexible careers, more assurances that women can readily return to the workforce after they give birth, and so on. So, things like that, basically, we have to look at, I think.
If if I can add some, um I think we can need to focus on productivity rather than work hours in the office. And of course, that involves the flexible work arrangement. And at work, too, the the paternity leave uh taking. Now, in Singapore, it's finally mandatory. And I think we Singapore has taken a big legal step, but we need to encourage more. Um we have increased uh paternity leave from 2 weeks to 4 weeks now. But to put it in the context, um you know, Finland in 1994, the paternity leave was 4 weeks already. So, that's another thing other than work hours, these uh flexible work arrangement, and how people how employers view men's uh family role as legitimate is very very important.
It sounds like a little bit of a vicious cycle. We want to have everything. We want to have the lovely home, the car, the career, the children, and then we put pressure on ourselves. And I and I come back to my question about is it financial pressure that we put on ourselves? Because it seems like all of these things cost money.
I think it is. It is financial pressure, but I think in the context of a system where I think first off the job market is very competitive and people constantly feel as if if they are not doing the top performers at work, they could be at high risk of retrenchment. The structural question is are we doing enough in terms of unemployment support, training support and so on, right? Because to to alleviate the insecurity. We often feel all these statistics quoted about how it takes so many hundreds of thousands of dollars or million dollars or whatever to raise a child. But actually quite a large chunk of that expenditure comes from things which may not be strictly necessary, right? Because they involve for example, parental paying for inputs like tuition, enrichment and so on, but nonetheless, even if they're not strictly necessary, many middle-class parents think it is absolutely critical
neighbor's children have it.
Right. And and without it your kids are going to fall behind. But then what's the structure, right? I I to me I think the structure behind why the parents uh feel so compelled to do this is because we have in a way designed our education system and our entry to job system revolving around the idea of academic merit, which is quite narrowly defined still. I mean, goodness knows I think all the universities have tried to broaden the definition by going to more holistic admissions, but the reality is that a very large chunk of your admission score, which determines what course you can pursue and so on, is still your grade, right?
If I may, I think we should move away from the narrative of we're driving ourselves crazy. We and we don't have to. Because there are real external
Yeah.
objective environment that are making people do it that way. What Walter is saying about education, the intensive education, how competitive it makes parents feel that they need to be. Um that's building in the education system, of course, because you have um, PSLE, for example, at the end of the elementary school, that are highly long-term has long-term consequences to people's, uh, children's, uh, tracks. Uh, and that make parents, uh, anxious, very anxious. Before they even
who take a year off to stay home to
Exactly, many of them do that. So, that's that. And also, as I say, they at the workplace, these, uh, highly long hours and highly competitive expectations. You have to make success um, compatible with a life where people can enjoy some of the success that they have. If you were to the extent driving people, uh, to to a level where all the money they make needs to go into children's tuition or condos, then they're going to feel very anxious. And with the, you know, AI, uh, technological disruption, and so on, the anxiety, of course, is going to rise. So, it's not people are driving themselves to be crazy, to be anxious. There are real external environments, uh, that are uh, making it incompatible for people's life and aspirations these days.
I have one final question for the both of you. When future generations look back at this period in Singapore, what do you think they will say people were struggling to hold on to?
I think Singaporeans are struggling to hold on to the fence that Singapore is a preferred home for them and for their children. I think many people, including people my age, uh, feel increasingly uncertain about. Because, for example, sometimes when I talk to my friends, they joke about how they can't afford to retire in Singapore. And of course then it extends to our children because again for many people the middle and upper middle class, they would like to leave their their children better off than they were. So, you're just imagining about the kinds of investments you make in your children, the housing you need to help them buying and so on. It's just very formidable. So, I I think that's the struggle that we're facing because there are many things that I think for those of us who grew up in Singapore that we love about Singapore, right? It's not just of course where our families, culture and so on is, it's also I think the sense of safety and security in what we we now are increasingly seeing as an incredibly dangerous and and volatile world. But if we feel that we our children might be forced out if it were because of economic necessity, because we need to make our retirement dollars stretch and so on, that's a very uncomfortable and very odd feeling to have. But it is I think a feeling that some people are having.
Jean.
I think Singaporeans want to continuously feel very proud to be a Singaporeans, a member of a country that is very safe, uh of of a lot of wealth, um and a place where family is important. To be at this stage of economic development, pay perhaps a little less attention to economic progress or growth, but to people's psychological well-being, uh to allow them to achieve what they want. I I still think that people want to have a family and have to a happy home here in Singapore.
So, hopefully in the future we'll have the happy home, we'll have the security, and less of the stress.
Yes.
[laughter]
We can have aspirations of a different kind, right?
Yes.
Thank you so much for joining me today. You've been watching Lens on Singapore. I'm Clarissa Monteiro. Thank you for being with us.