16 - Demographic Trends and Consequences

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Singapore is one of the few countries where the government has always assumed an active role in attempting to influence the course of population trends with the view of resolving any adverse consequences that may emerge. From the very beginning when the country achieved independence from the British in 1965, the Singapore Government has put in place a population control programme that offered contraceptive services in its clinics, legalized abortion, and voluntary sterilization. The programme was so comprehensive and successful that fertility was induced to tumble rapidly to replacement level in 1975.

The somewhat low fertility recorded a few years before 1975 should have been taken as a clear signal that it would not take too long for fertility to reach replacement level. It was quite obvious that the continuation of the antinatalist policies would sustain fertility at well below-replacement level, and indeed that was what actually happened. These measures were essentially left untouched for more than a decade until the mid-1980s. Moreover, the eventual implementation of the pronatalist policies was not quite decisive, with the various incentives introduced gradually at different stages over a period of thirty years. In the meantime, the group of social and economic factors favouring small family norms continued to exert a powerful influence on the reproductive behaviour of married couples.

The demographic history of Singapore had indeed reached a critical stage where fertility had consistently remained well below the replacement level. This must necessarily imply that the annual number of births produced by our women was no longer adequate to replenish the population. It was widely recognized that the only solution to this predicament was to rely on the continuous inflow of new immigrants to prevent the population from declining in the years ahead. With the inflow of newcomers under its direct management, the government was now entrusted with the important responsibility of ensuring a correct supply of newcomers to sustain economic growth as well as to enlarge the resident population.

DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS

The total population of Singapore has been divided into resident population and non-resident population, with the former consisting of persons who are citizens and permanent residents.