I think you have a point, there are more factors at work besides
the stop at 2, like high costs of living, women working no time
look after children, changes in mentality due to propaganda during
stop at 2 etc.
Singapore's government saw
rapid population growth as a threat to living standards and
political stability, as large numbers of children and young people
threatened to overwhelm the schools, the medical services, and the
ability of the economy to generate employment for them
all.
In the atmosphere of crisis
after the 1965 separation from Malaysia, the government in 1966
established the Family Planning and Population Board, which was
responsible for providing clinical services and public education on
family planning.
Birth rates fell from 1957 to
1970, but then began to rise as women of the postwar baby boom
reached child-bearing years. The government responded with
policies intended to further reduce the birth rate. Abortion and
voluntary sterilization were legalized in
1970.
Between 1969 and 1972, a set
of policies known as "population disincentives" were instituted to
raise the costs of bearing third, fourth, and subsequent children.
Civil servants
received no paid maternity leave for third and subsequent
children; maternity hospitals charged progressively
higher fees for each additional birth; and income tax deductions
for all but the first two children were eliminated.
Large families received no
extra consideration in public housing assignments,
and top priority in the competition for enrollment in the most
desirable primary schools was given to only children and to
children whose parents had been sterilized before the age of forty.
Voluntary
sterilization was rewarded by seven days of paid sick leave and by
priority in the allocation of such public goods as housing and
education.
The policies were accompanied by publicity
campaigns urging parents to "Stop at Two" and arguing that large
families threatened parents' present livelihood and future
security. The penalties weighed more heavily on the
poor, and were justified by the authorities as a means of
encouraging the
poor to concentrate their limited resources on adequately nurturing
a few children who would be equipped to rise from poverty and
become productive citizens.
Fertility declined throughout
the 1970s, reaching the replacement level of 1.006 in 1975, and
thereafter declining below that level. With fertility below the
replacement level, the population would after some fifty years
begin to decline unless supplemented by immigration. In a manner
familiar to demographers, Singapore's demographic transition to low
levels of population growth accompanied increases in income,
education, women's participation in paid employment, and control of
infectious diseases.
It was impossible to separate the
effects of government policies from the broader
socioeconomic forces promoting later marriage and smaller families,
but it was clear that in Singapore all the factors affecting
population growth worked in the same direction.
The government's policies and
publicity campaigns thus probably hastened or reinforced fertility
trends that stemmed from changes in economic and educational
structures. By the 1980s, Singapore's vital
statistics resembled those of other countries with comparable
income levels but without Singapore's publicity campaigns and
elaborate array of administrative incentives.
http://www.photius.com/countries/singapore/society
I heard from last time Social Studies teacher that got German
doctors/ sociologists tell him straight that no birth control
needed for SG in those days, though he just went ahead anyway.
Dunno if true or not. =\
