Baby bonus scheme

last SG · 2004-01-29T01:47:16+00:00

I agree with you on your stand that Kinship and Family Ties CANNOT be taught in schools as subjects or modules. Such concepts are simply just too 'Human'....

Yunhaier SG

Govt reviewing baby bonus scheme

It is thinking of new ways to arrest low birth rate, says DPM Lee, adding that birth rate is one of top three priorities

By Lee Hui Chieh

AWARE that money alone cannot persuade the stork to visit, the Government is reviewing its baby bonus scheme as well as trying to conceive other ways to encourage Singaporeans to marry earlier and have more children.

So far, its attempts to arrest the slide in births has not worked. The number of births last year is believed to be the lowest in 26 years.

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Just 31,171 babies were born between January and October. During the same period in 2002, there were 33,618. And for the whole of that year, 40,864 births, about 600 less than 2001.

Speaking to reporters during a Chinese New Year dinner at Teck Ghee Community Club yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: 'I don't think you can just depend on money to encourage people to have children. Having children is a very personal... decision.'

However, he declined to elaborate on whether the baby bonus would be increased and other ideas the Government is considering.

The baby bonus, introduced in 2001, offers parents $3,000 to have a second child and $6,000 for the third child over six years.

Earlier, in a speech to more than 1,300 residents at the dinner, he listed the low birth rate as one of the Government's top three priorities this year. The other two are economic restructuring and political transition.

Last year, each Singaporean woman produced 1.37 babies. She needed to have 2.1, just to replace the population. The problem was especially marked among the Chinese, with each Chinese woman producing 1.18 babies.

Citing these figures, DPM Lee said: 'It's not a new problem. To encourage people, we have incentives, we have tax rebates, we have all sorts of things, but still the number of babies has been going down.

'So this is a very clear problem. We have all these procreation incentives, I think we have to review them... and see how we can focus them, make them more effective, and where we need to enhance them...'

Echoing Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's Chinese New Year message, he added: 'We have to change people's mindsets, so they think of having babies as something that's happy, that's good and that's what they'd like to do and not just, so much work...'

He was more certain of the direction to take on economic restructuring, saying that Singapore would have to make structural changes to stay two steps ahead of the regional competition, especially that posed by China and India.

Workers will have carry on being trained in new skills such that they can hold new jobs. The country will have to attract new investments, so it can handle more value-added production and promote services that in turn create new jobs, such as in health care, education and tourism.

'We have to make ourselves flexible, so we can adjust and roll with the conditions... That includes making our wages more flexible...'

He asked Singaporeans, especially those born after 1965, to rally behind their new leaders, expected to take over sometime later this year.

'We're opening up, we're getting people to be involved... We're wanting more diversity, to be more varied and rich culturally in terms of expression, in terms of views. At the same time, we want to maintain the unity and togetherness, so that we are one people, one nation, one Singapore.'

***

What do you people think is the...

I) Critical factor/s affecting and contributing to such low birth rates?
II) Suggestion solution to effectively tackle this issue?

Cheers

Inzaghi SG

just ask the govt to accept the truth n stop grumbling.. Mr. Green

NEWater SG

this just shows that our coming prime minister is going to be a huge bullshitter. =D

Ah Ma SG

ban condoms in singapore Twisted Evil

Atobe SG

Originally posted by Yunhaier:
[b]Govt reviewing baby bonus scheme

It is thinking of new ways to arrest low birth rate, says DPM Lee, adding that birth rate is one of top three priorities

By Lee Hui Chieh

AWARE that money alone cannot persuade the stork to visit, the Government is reviewing its baby bonus scheme as well as trying to conceive other ways to encourage Singaporeans to marry earlier and have more children.

So far, its attempts to arrest the slide in births has not worked. The number of births last year is believed to be the lowest in 26 years.

Advertisement

Just 31,171 babies were born between January and October. During the same period in 2002, there were 33,618. And for the whole of that year, 40,864 births, about 600 less than 2001.

Speaking to reporters during a Chinese New Year dinner at Teck Ghee Community Club yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: 'I don't think you can just depend on money to encourage people to have children. Having children is a very personal... decision.'

However, he declined to elaborate on whether the baby bonus would be increased and other ideas the Government is considering.

The baby bonus, introduced in 2001, offers parents $3,000 to have a second child and $6,000 for the third child over six years.

Earlier, in a speech to more than 1,300 residents at the dinner, he listed the low birth rate as one of the Government's top three priorities this year. The other two are economic restructuring and political transition.

Last year, each Singaporean woman produced 1.37 babies. She needed to have 2.1, just to replace the population. The problem was especially marked among the Chinese, with each Chinese woman producing 1.18 babies.

Citing these figures, DPM Lee said: 'It's not a new problem. To encourage people, we have incentives, we have tax rebates, we have all sorts of things, but still the number of babies has been going down.

'So this is a very clear problem. We have all these procreation incentives, I think we have to review them... and see how we can focus them, make them more effective, and where we need to enhance them...'

Echoing Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's Chinese New Year message, he added: 'We have to change people's mindsets, so they think of having babies as something that's happy, that's good and that's what they'd like to do and not just, so much work...'

He was more certain of the direction to take on economic restructuring, saying that Singapore would have to make structural changes to stay two steps ahead of the regional competition, especially that posed by China and India.

Workers will have carry on being trained in new skills such that they can hold new jobs. The country will have to attract new investments, so it can handle more value-added production and promote services that in turn create new jobs, such as in health care, education and tourism.

'We have to make ourselves flexible, so we can adjust and roll with the conditions... That includes making our wages more flexible...'

He asked Singaporeans, especially those born after 1965, to rally behind their new leaders, expected to take over sometime later this year.

'We're opening up, we're getting people to be involved... We're wanting more diversity, to be more varied and rich culturally in terms of expression, in terms of views. At the same time, we want to maintain the unity and togetherness, so that we are one people, one nation, one Singapore.'

***

What do you people think is the...

I) Critical factor/s affecting and contributing to such low birth rates?
II) Suggestion solution to effectively tackle this issue?

Cheers[/b]

Imagine in 18 years time into the future, the available number for recruitment into National Service for the SAF, SCDF and Police will be alarmingly small, which require all three services to be shrunk in size of manpower that will have significant impact into the future.

Assuming the annual sex ratio of 1:1 boy-girl babies, and 18 years into the future, the available manpower to mann our security forces will be -
20,000 for 2019 (from 40,864 births in 2001),
17,000 in 2020 (from 33,618 births in 2002), and
16,000 in 2021 (from 31,171 births in 2003).

The present intake per year is more then double these numbers.

The shrinking numbers will threaten not only the manpower requirements of our Security Services, but also the population make-up of Singapore.

It will require more qualified foreign workers to take up residence to fill the shortages in manpower, and accentuate the already competitive employment environment for Singaporeans..

The only way to encourage the young to form family nucleas is to lower the cost of living that include the purchase price of HDB or Private homes, transportation costs, food costs, essential services, children's welfare and education.

Such expenses should absorb no more then SEVENTY PERCENT of the TOTAL HOUSEHOLD INCOME of each family, with the remaining THIRTY PERCENT being saved into CPF Account (20 percent) and into Private Investments (10 percent).

At present, for any young couple to consider a commitment to build a family, both parties will have to consider themselves to be in debt to the Financial System for the next TWENTY to TWENTY-FIVE Years of their working lives.

Without any social safety net to cushion the impact of any severe economic upheavals - as had been experienced in the sudden economic downturn in 1985, 1997, and 2002-2003 - the hard lessons seen and felt by the young will only discourage them to even consider building a family until they are able to meet at least FIFTY PERCENT of the various basic needs.

This will require a delay of at least another TEN to FIFTEEN years from day of graduation from Tertiary or High School Education.

With the recent reduction in wages, salaries, and CPF contributions, and increases to GST and other Government related and controlled essential services (that include utilities charges, hospital fees, public transportation costs), the ball is clearly in the court of the Singapore Government, and not in the hands of any young Singaporeans to influence the outcome.

It is in the power of the Singapore Government to lower the cost of development for housing developers and HDB, which ultimately will have a snowball effect in lowering the costs of a multitude of prices for homes, transport, goods and services for Singaporeans.

Let us not have the Government pass the buck and make the Citizens responsible for the problems that they have largely created with a short-sighted Family Planning Program, and a myopic view of trying to transplant the concept of a 'Swiss Standard of Living' into an Asian setting by enforced artificial means.

Parka SG

Shocked Shocked Shocked

Parka SG

from today's straits times.

Leader
The absent Singaporean

IT IS a perverse law. The world's population, which is about 6.33 billion now, is projected to grow to 7.8 billion by 2025. Most of the growth will take place in the developing world, that is, in many of those countries that are least equipped to support the new numbers. By contrast, the populations of many developed countries are expected to shrink over the next two decades, threatening their ability to maintain labour forces, raise sufficient taxes from the working population and, ultimately, preserve their standard of living. Combine that prospect with an ageing population, and the conclusion is a frightening one. Just how frightening was suggested by Mr Erik R. Peterson and Mr Jay C. Farrar of the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Today, they told a conference here recently, there are 30 pension-eligible elders in the developed world for every 100 working-age adults. By the year 2040, there will be 70. In some countries - Italy, Japan and Spain - projections suggest that the number will be 100 by the year 2040: one pension-eligible person for every working-age adult. How, they asked, could the social welfare systems of Western Europe be sustained in the face of ageing societies? The question is a pertinent one for other affluent societies as well.

Given these stark realities, it should be logical for those in poorer countries to opt to have fewer children - to preserve the little that they have - and for those in richer countries to produce more children to sustain what they have. But the reality is very different. All around the world, people live as if there is no tomorrow. The poor, accustomed to scarcity, do not appear to care what happens to the next generation. The rich, anxious to protect their living standards, do not seem to understand that their children would not enjoy the same if their numbers fell sharply. Some of them take children out of the equation - by not having any - thereby worsening an already bad problem for their societies. This is why absent Singaporeans - those who are not being born - featured in Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's Chinese New Year message last week. In spite of incentives, there were just 41,451 births in 2001 and 40,864 in 2002, when Singapore needs at least 50,000 births a year to sustain economic, defence and other manpower needs.

Perhaps this is nature's revenge on inequality. The poor increase their numbers even as the rich decrease theirs, thus making the world a little more egalitarian for those who have no way of choosing whether to be born in sub-Saharan Africa or in Singapore. But nature is of little comfort to policy-makers who must try to keep Singapore going. However, there is a problem with what governments can actually do. A New York Times article on Mexico in 1999 quoted a mother who bore 14 children in 25 years. 'I know the government tells everybody to have fewer now, but I think it's none of their business,' she said. Singaporeans would, by and large, disagree that their having more babies is none of the Government's business, but not enough of them seem to be listening to its message, sweetened though it is with incentives. Ultimately, perhaps, the answer lies in nature. Having children, bringing them up and watching them as they overtake one's hopes and dreams - this is the reward that parenthood brings. Ultimately, children are their own justification. What they mean or do not mean for the economy comes afterwards. This is true in the poorest countries as in the richest. Maybe, some of the wisdom of the poor will rub off on Singapore's rich.
Copyright @ 2003 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

Ah Ma SG

ahh ok lar..ban prostitution...then men bo bian mus guai guai go home Twisted Evil

windjammer SG

Having children needs great responsibilties and lotsa money. Watever they are offering is an extremely insufficient to really encourage singaporeans to have more kids.

They shud pat themselves on the back for successfully making singaporeans to follow their 'STOP AT TWO' campaign in the 70's.

If they really want to encourage singaporeans to hv more babies, they shud see wat the Swedish government is giving to their citizen.

Mr. Green

Farmer Brown SG

What do you people think is the...

I) Critical factor/s affecting and contributing to such low birth rates?
II) Suggestion solution to effectively tackle this issue?

Cheers[/b]

1)Higher Goals set by the younger generation + higher costs of living = More time devoted to career, hence = less time/effort/reason to work on babies

2) higher standard of living = higher cost for bearing children = disincentive for bearing children

3) Youth's being disillusioned by the notion of romance(like me) = higher desire to live a happy wandering carefree life = duh~

4) Condoms and their birth control brudders and sisters

Farmer Brown SG

Solutions!

1+2) reduce costs of living in singapore( we are a horny bunch so no worries when ppl have the money)

3) er.. when i think of it i'll let u know.. can anyone tell me?

4)Ah ma.. u tell em! hey actually why not poke holes in all the condoms and secretly replace birth control pills with sugar tablets(placebo!)...

sgboy2004 SG

cannot....then i will run out of business for my condy venture

Yunhaier SG

Your analysis is detail and clear. As what I felt as well, unless cost of living are going down - people wouldn't have much financial security to start a family.

The only way to encourage the young to form family nucleas is to lower the cost of living that include the purchase price of HDB or Private homes, transportation costs, food costs, essential services, children's welfare and education.

Seriously speaking, I doubt the garmen will lower cost like what you have stated above. Guess, our population would still be shrinking for the next many years to come. Rolling Eyes

Cheers

nismoS132 SG

i honestly feel that the human population should start reducing now.

6 billion of us is too many.

from a human, economic sense, we ought to be growing bigger since there's still so much land. but if we look at the entire planet in perspective, there's just simply too much of us.

look at the rate that the population has jumped in the past 100 years, and the amount of devastation we've done.

the planet can't contain us for much longer.

Atobe SG

This planet 'Earth' may not contain us, that is the reason we have to support the efforts of the European Community, People's Republic of China, and the USA - in their search for ways to Colonise the Universe.

First - the International Space Station,
Second - Manned Base Station on the Moon in Earth's orbit.
Third - jump off point from Moon Base to planets further from earth.

Bochupi SG

Laughing

nismoS132 SG

i agree very much with the idea of space colonisation, but until we can cure our very own planet, i don’t find it an ideal solution to put our people on other planets when we’re just going to be sucking it dry again.

Farmer Brown SG

As Mr Anderson would say in times like these, Human’s are a virus that should be contained. I say colonise another planet for the animals and the eco-system and let it grow UNATTENDED. That way only when humans are ready to live in harmony with nature then should they migrate.

boy in blues SG

Originally posted by Yunhaier:

Your analysis is detail and clear. As what I felt as well, unless cost of living are going down - people wouldn't have much financial security to start a family.

[b]The only way to encourage the young to form family nucleas is to lower the cost of living that include the purchase price of HDB or Private homes, transportation costs, food costs, essential services, children's welfare and education.

Seriously speaking, I doubt the garmen will lower cost like what you have stated above. Guess, our population would still be shrinking for the next many years to come. Rolling Eyes

Cheers [/b]

Mr. Green so they can help by making this piece of land a more hospitable habitat to survive in? in summary, money and opportunity.

[ Neo ] SG

It is with great interest that I read your post, Atobe.

Encompassing on the social fundamentals such as housing, education, healthcare concerns, as well as the cost of bring up another child, the above brings to mind a proposal that I had once read.

Hundreds of years back during the Spring and Autumn Warring States era, there was a small country by the name of 'Yue'.

Having defeated previously in a war with another powerful state of the time by the name of 'Wu', the King of 'Yue' who was named 'Guo Jian', was determine to extract revenge after having been made to serve as slave to the Wu King, Fu Chai for 3 years.

Weaken by the war that the country had lost, Fan Li - the Prime Minister of Yue, realized that in order to restore his country back into a strong state, one of the important issues that he would have to tackle effectively, would be to increase the tiny population size of the Yue State, from it miserable number, to a sizable figure that would enable the country to hold conscription orders for a sizable army.

To encourage the Yue population to increase the country's birthrate and figure, the State implemented the following new legislations:

1) For every family that has more than one child, the State will take care of the expenses that is required to bring up a Second.

2) For families with more than two children, the State will take care of all the expenses that is required to bring up both the Second, and the Third Child.

3) In conjunction with the above, all newly cultivated farmlands will be tax free for the next 7 years.

The above, took place under circumstances which is a little familiar to us at the moment.

Yue was facing internal economic woes while Singapore has just experienced a continuous wave of economic recessions and slowdowns since 1997 to current.

Yue has had its population lost by a significant number after the war while Singapore has been facing a long run decline trend in birthrates ratio and numbers.

While the Baby Bonus Scheme had eventually materialized to encourage and attempt to address the unfavourable reproduction trend, I fear that the current incentives' efforts may only meet the tip of an iceberg problem.

To better address the deep rooted concerns, why not have the following :

1) A new public housing scheme where by family units can purchase larger room flats at a significantly discounted price, in agreement for say, a 3 children + 2 parents family unit in fifteen years time?

Failure to adhere to the agreement can always have HDB reclaiming back its discounts back from the original purchasers at a later date.

2) Like the State of Yue, have free primary and secondary education for the 3rd or onwards child?

3) And similar to number 2, but with State paying for free basic medical consultation fees at government polyclinics?

Investments made in the above areas should not be seen as expenses to the State.

Since every single cent that goes into the above illustration reaps long-term returns with a child eventually growing up into an economic able contributer, a NS ready soldier, as well as a better and more mature reflecter on the investments made in him/her by the State, clearly these will be money well spent.