Thursday, 3 December 2009, 9:09 pm | 526 views
Latest:
Yong Vui Kong’s lawyer, Mr M Ravi has replied to DPP,
Jaswant Singh’s letter seeking to set aside the High Court’s stay
of execution for Vui Kong. In his letter to the DPP, Mr Ravi said
“there are specific procedures for
filing an appeal against a decision of the High Court and under
section 46 the trial judge should record in writing the grounds of
his decisions. We do not consider the letter from the Deputy Public
Prosecutor meets the requirements of the Act.” (Read
Rachel Zeng’s blog
here.) (You can
join the Facebook group in support of Vui Kong’s lawyer, M Ravi,
here.)
Leong Sze Hian
I
refer to the report “Average monthly household expenditure for
2007/08 up 2.7per cent vs 2002/03 (CNA, Dec 2).
How many poor people are there in Singapore?
I believe we have never done any detailed studies on the poverty
line, or who are those in poverty.
Well, the Department of Statistics’ Report on the Household
Expenditure 2007/08 released on 2 December, may offer some clues to
the answers to these questions.
Although this may be somewhat arbitrary, we could set some
parameters to help us interpret the data. Let us define households
with a monthly income below $1,000 as ‘poor’, and those earning
between $1,000 to $1,999 as ‘relatively poor’.
Let us also note that for households within the 1st – 20th and
21th – 40th income quintiles, Housing and Related Expenditure took
up the highest proportion of their total expenditure. As such,
their disposable income (after paying for housing) may be much less
than their total income.
The total number of households in 2007/08 was 1,091,339.
By the above parameters, 9.7 per cent (105,965) of total
households can be considered ‘poor’, while 10.6 per cent (116,092)
fall into the ‘relatively poor’ category.
11.7 per cent of total households spend below $1,000 a month,
while 19.9 per cent of total households spend between $1,000 to
$1,999 a month.
In the past decade, the bottom 20 per cent of households by
income have had to increase their spending.
In 2007/08, this bottom 20 per cent consisted of 218,280
households. They spent an average of $1,760 per month.
This represents an increase from $1,693 in 1997/08 and $1,690 in
2002/03.
Thrifty elderly?
The elderly seem to be able to spend less and earn less, as they
get older.
For example, out of 78,116 households whose Main Income Earner
is aged 65 and over, just over half (50.3 per cent) spend below
$1,000 a month.
58.2 per cent of such households earned less than $1,000 a
month.
Of the 45,197 households whose main income earner is aged
between 60 to 64, over a quarter (25.9 per cent) have a monthly
expenditure below $1,000.
Within this category, 27.1 per cent of households have a monthly
income less than $1,000.
Spending more while earning less
The report’s Key Findings – Household Expenditure, says that even
the lowest 20 per cent of households had to spend more over the
last few years – their expenditure grew at 1.1 per cent per annum
from 2002/03 and 2007/08.
In 1997/8, the Average Monthly Household Expenditure (AMHE) of
this lowest 20 per cent of households was $1,693.
This figure fell to $1,670 in 2002/3, but increased to $1,760 in
2007/8.
What this means is that AMHE for this group actually declined by
0.3 per cent per annum from 1997/8 to 2002/03, and increased by
only 0.4 per cent per annum from 1997/08 to 2007/08.
But to put this in perspective, we can compare the above numbers
to the Average Monthly Household Income (AMHI) for the same group –
the lowest 20 per cent of households.
In 1997/8, this group’s AMHI stood at $1,309. By 2002/3, it had
fallen to $1,104 – a decrease of 3.4 per cent per annum.
Although it was to climb to $1,274 in 2007/8, the AMHI for these
households still went through a decline by 0.3 per cent per annum
from 1997/8 to 2007/8.
So, they earned less, but had to spend more.
More startlingly, we can see that, throughout this period, the
income for these households could not cover all their
expenditure.
In 1997/8, their income only accounted for 77 per cent of their
expenditure. This fell to 66 per cent in 2002/3, before rising to
72 per cent 2007/08.
Finally, consider this statistic – 105,965 households earn below
$1,000 a month. Against this backdrop, there are currently only
26,000 families receiving financial assistance from the Community
Development Councils and only 3,000 receive help under the Public
Assistance Scheme.