6 - Incentives and Disincentives

Summary

OVERVIEW

In providing every possible support, financial or otherwise, to the Family Planning Association in its attempt to assist women to plan their births and avoid having unwanted babies and to check the rapid rate of population increase in the early 1960s, the Singapore Government was aware of the conflicting nature of some government policies with respect to the general concept of family planning and the promotion of a small family norm in particular. In his opening address at the Seventh Conference of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) held in Singapore on 10 February 1963, the Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, referred to the anomalies in certain government policies, carried over from the colonial period, seen from the point of view of population control. He stated,

Even we, as a Government, find ourselves pursuing contradictory policies. On the one hand, we want to discourage large families. … On the other, we have inherited and are still practising a system of values which gives the advantage to a man with a larger family. For instance, in public housing the number of points a man scores for priority in getting accommodation increases with the number of children he has got. So too with social welfare benefits, the bigger the family the bigger the relief and the same with income tax relief.

However, these contradictory rules were not altered then as the Prime Minister felt that humanitarian values and sentiments had prevented the government from making any change.

It would appear that in the next few years, the problem of these contradictory rules was constantly occupying the minds of the government leaders as the Prime Minister brought up this question once again in his National Day message on 9 August 1967. He said,

We have to revise all our social values so that no one is required to have a large family in order to qualify for a housing board flat, for social relief and so on. Today, strange as it may seem, we are giving priority to people with large families, thereby encouraging people to have large families. … This requires a revamping of all our social services, free primary schools, free hospitals and free maternity clinics regardless of how large the family is and the bigger social welfare allowances are given to the bigger families.