10 - Relaxing Antinatalist Policies

Summary

We have observed the quick reaction of the government in confronting the population problems facing the country during the early postindependence period. The wide range of strong antinatalist measures proved to be very effective in rapidly pushing down fertility to replacement level within a decade or so. In sharp contrast, the government was rather slow in recognizing the necessity of removing completely the antinatalist policies. Even when the policy changes were finally put in place, they were implemented very gradually in different stages over a period of some thirty-five years.

The postnatalist era will be the focus of our attention in the remaining part of the book, with chapters dealing with the loosening of the antinatalist policies, the introduction of limited pronatalist incentives, the reinforcing of the limited pronatalist incentives, the implementation of new pronatalist measures for mothers without any restriction on the birth order of the babies and below-replacement fertility. This will be followed by a chapter on the hot button topic of immigration policies and programmes. The concluding chapter will discuss the complex demographic issues and challenges that must be tackled by the people and the nation.

NEED FOR POLICY CHANGES

It may be recalled that the population control programme was implemented in the mid-1960s. Its specific objective was to lower the level of fertility so as to reduce the rate of population growth. This was part of the national development strategy to raise the standard of living of the people. As it became increasingly obvious that this objective would be achieved by the mid-1970s, attention was focused on the wider issue of the maximum size of the population that Singapore could accommodate in the future. The extremely small land area with no endowed natural resources must necessarily imply that Singapore cannot allow the population to grow indefinitely into an unmanageable size that can threaten the very existence of the island Republic. This led to the government declaring in 1974 that the national demographic goal thereafter was to stabilize the population in the future.

In order to achieve this long-term demographic goal, it was essential to fulfil two conditions concerning fertility in accordance with stationary population theory.