Journalism

1462. Azrina Md. Zain. “Saya Tidak Berdendam”. Dewan Masyarakat 43, no. 11 (November 2005): 24–25. NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1463. Ghazali Ismail. Tempat Jatoh Lagi di-Kenang. Singapore: Penerbitan Riwayat, 1968. 105 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NUS.

1464. Ghazali Ismail. Warta dan Wartawan. Singapore: Malaya Publishing House, 1969. 73 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NUS.

1465. Ghazali Ismail. Wartawan dalam Sa-ribu Suasana. Kuala Lumpur: Utusan Melayu, 1967. 238 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1466. Ishak Haji Muhammad. Pengalaman Pak Sako Tiga Tahun di Singapura. Petaling Jaya: Pustaka Budaya Agency, 1975. 61 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NUS.

1467. Jeniri Amir. “Perjuangan Getir Wartawan Melayu”. Dewan Masyarakat 43, no. 11 (November 2005): 11–14. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1468. Persatuan Wartawan Melayu Singapura. Temasha Wartawan, 14th May ‘72. Singapore: Persatuan Wartawan Melayu Singapura, 1972. 1 vol. (unpaged). NUS.

1469. Roff, William R. “The Ins and Outs of Hadhrami Journalism in Malaya, 1900–1941: Assimilation or Identity Maintenance?” In The Hadhrami Diaspora in Southeast Asia: Identity Maintenance or Assimilation?, edited by Ibrahim Abushouk Ahmed and Hassan Ahmed Ibrahim. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1470. Za'aba. “Malay Journalism in Malaya”. JMBRAS 19, pt. 2 (October 1941): 244–50. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS. Also published in Malay under the title: “Kewartawanan Melayu di Malaya”. Dewan Budaya 6, no. 8 (August 1984): 42–45. NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

Mass Media

1471. A.M. Iskandar Ahmad. Persuratkhabaran Melayu. 1876–1968. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1980. 221 pp. NLB, NUS. Previous ed. published: Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1973. 190 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NUS.

1472. Abdul Jalil Haji Anuar. “Majalah Melayu di Singapura”. Pelita Bahasa: ke Arah Kesempurnaan Bahasa 3, no. 8 (Ogos 1991): 38–39. NLB, NUS.

1473. Abu Bakar Hamzah. “Al-Imam: Its Role in Malay Society, 1906–1908”. MPhiI dissertation, University of Kent, 1981. 320 pp. NUS. Also published under the same title: Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara, 1991. 253 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NUS.

1474. Ahmat Adam. Sejarah dan Bibliografi Akhbar dan Majalah Melayu Abad Kesembilan Belas. Bangi, Selangor: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1992. 168 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1475. Alfian Sa'at. “Theorising Aksi Mat Yoyo: On the Children's TV Show Aksi Mat Yoyo and ‘That Things with Malays and Cats’”. Focas: Forum on Contemporary Art & Society 6 (2007): 202–9. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

Politics and Government

1850. Abdul Halim Kader. Malay Muslim Singaporeans: Where Do We Stand? Singapore: Taman Bacaan Pemuda Pemudi Melayu Singapura, 2012. 254 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1851. Abdul Latiff Sahan. “Political Attitudes of the Malays: 1945–1953”. Academic exercise, Department of History, University of Malaya, Singapore, 1959. 93 pp. NUS.

1852. Adibah Amin. “Singapura dan Manusia Tiga Dimensi”. Dewan Masyarakat 26, no. 3 (March 1988): 30–31. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1853. Ahmad Mattar. “All Singaporeans Share a Common Loyalty”. Speeches 4, no. 9 (1981): 49–50. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1854. Alfian Sa'at. “Political Integration and the Singapore Malay Community”. Focas: Forum on Contemporary Art & Society 4 (2002): 385–93. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1855. Aljunied, Syed Muhd Khairudin. “Hadhramis within Malay Activism: The Role of Al-Saqqaf(s) in the Post-War Singapore”. In The Hadhrami Diaspora in Southeast Asia: Identity Maintenance or Assimilation?, edited by Ibrahim Abushouk Ahmed and Hassan Ahmed. Leiden: Boston: Brlll, 2009. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1856. Aljunied, Syed Haroon Mohamed. “Social Background and Representation in the Higher Civil Service in Malaysia and Singapore”. MEc dissertation, Universiti Malaya, 1974. 266 pp. NUS.

1857. Bedlington, Stanley. “Political Integration and the Singapore Malay Community”. Journal of the Historical Society (1971): 47–54. ISEAS, NLB, NTU, NUS.

1858. Bedlington, Stanley. “The Singapore Malay Community: The Politics of State Integration”. PhD dissertation, Cornell University, New York, 1974. 538 pp. ISEAS, NTUNIE, NUS.

1859. “Bringing the Races Together”. Asiaweek 17, no. 32 (9 August 1991): 22–23. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1860. Brown, David. “Ethnicity and Corporatism in Singapore”. In The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia. London: Routledge, 1994. ISEAS, NLB, NTU, NTUNIE, NUS.

1861. Busch, Peter Alan. Legitimacy and Ethnicity: A Case Study of Singapore. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1974. 157 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1862. Busch, Peter Alan. “Political Unity & Ethnic Diversity: A Case Study of Singapore”. PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1972. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1974. 438 pp. ISEAS, NTUNIE, NUS.

1863. Chan Heng Chee. Singapore: The Politics of Survival, 1965–1967. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1971. 65 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NTU, NTUNIE, NUS.

1864. Chang Chak Yin. “Political Violence in Malaysia and Singapore”. MA dissertation, University of Western Ontario, 1971. London: Central Microfilm Unit, Public Archives of Canada, 1971. 1 microfilm reel. NUS.

Public Health

1253. Campbell, J. Argyll. “Diet, Nutrition and Excretion of the Asiatic Races in Singapore”. JMBRAS 76 (1917): 57–65; 79 (1918): 107–12. ISEAS, NLB, NUS.

1254. Foo L.L. et al. “Breastfeeding Prevalence and Practices among Singaporean Chinese, Malay and Indian Mothers”. Health Promotion International 20, no. 3 (2005): 229–37. NTUNIE, NUS.

1255. Giam, Y.C. et al. “Drug Eruptions from Phenylbutazone in Jamu”. Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore 15, no. 1 (1986): 118–21. NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1256. Hairudin Harun. Medicine and Imperialism: A Study of the British Colonial Medical Establishment, Health Policy and Medical Research in the Malay Peninsula, 1786–1918. London: University of London Library, 1990. 6 microfiches. NLB, NUS.

1257. Jumari Naiyan. “Suatu Pilihan Peribadi”. Karyawan: Professionals for the Community (August 1994): 15–16. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

1258. Lim, Leslie, ed. Kampong Amber: Community Health Survey, 1979. Singapore: National University of Singapore, 1983. 3 microfiches. NUS.

1259. Mohan, T.C. “A Study of the P Blood Group System in the Singapore Population”. Singapore Medical Journal 30, no. 4 (1989): 372–75. NLB, NUS.

1260. Muir, C.S. “Demography and Age-Sex Distribution of the Autopsy Populations of Multiracial Singapore”. Singapore Medical Journal 5, no. 2 (1964): 96–104. NLB, NUS.

1261. National Health Survey 2010, Singapore. Singapore: Epidemiology and Disease Control Division, Ministry of Health, 2011. 187 pp. ISEAS, NTUNIE, NUS.

1262. Noorul Fatha. “’Health is Wealth’: A Call to Action”. MENDAKI Policy Digest (2013): 75–79. NLB.

1263. Noriza Mustapa and Lee Geok Yian. “Pilot Testing the Malay Version of the EORTC Questionnaire”. Singapore Nursing Journal 34, no. 2 (April/June 2007): 16–20. NLB, NUS.

1264. Ratnam, K.V. “Efficacy of Health Education Programme on Awareness of AIDS among Transsexuals”. Singapore Medical Journal 31, no. 1 (1990): 33–37. NLB, NUS.

1265. Tan, Nalla. “Intake of Foods Containing Proteins of High Biological Value in Families of Low Income Groups in Singapore”. Singapore Medical Journal 11, no. 2 (1970): 130–37. NLB, NUS.

1266. Viegas, O.A. et al. “Ethnicity and Obstetric Performance in Singapore”. Journal of Biosocial Science 27, no. 2 (1995): 151–62. NUS.

1267. Zuraimi Mohd Dahlan. “Socioeconomic Factors and Health”. Karyawan: Professionals for the Community 10, issue 1 (July 2009): 11–12. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

In this chapter, the knowledge, attitudes, and practice of married women in respect of family planning, abortion, sterilization, and government population policies will be examined. The source of data for this study is the First National Survey on Family Planning conducted in 1973 on a sample basis. By means of a two-stage stratified sample design, a slightly less than 1 per cent sample of 2,167 married women aged 15 to 44 were selected for the survey which was conducted from 7 to 29 September 1973. During this period, 2,078 of the selected women were successfully interviewed and the remaining 89 were refusals and non-contact cases, giving a response rate of 96 per cent, which is quite satisfactory as compared to similar surveys conducted in other countries. During the data processing stage, a few completed questionnaires had to be rejected for various reasons and the number finally accepted for tabulation amounted to 2,076. A wealth of information pertaining to these 2,076 married women was published in the report, but only the more important features that are relevant to this study will be discussed here.

FAMILY PLANNING

In the survey, the respondents were asked the number of birth control methods they had heard about but need not necessarily know how to use. Some 97.4 per cent of the 2,076 married women replied that they had heard of at least one contraceptive method. This was a very satisfactory figure as compared to the corresponding proportion of 94.7 per cent in Japan (1973) and 84.5 per cent in Peninsular Malaysia (1970).The almost universal knowledge of contraceptive methods among Singapore women was not surprising in view of the continuous clinical, information, and educational activities of the Family Planning Association since 1949 and subsequently the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board (SFPPB) since 1966. In addition, there was the high literacy rate and excellent mass communication channels in a small compact cosmopolitan community.

The detailed figures in Table 7.1 show that contraceptive knowledge had indeed permeated all strata of the community. The married women in each of the three main races had equally high levels of contraceptive knowledge, above 97 per cent, and so did the married women in each of the three age groups.

Our long-term demographic goal is to stabilize the population at a certain number sometime in the first half of the 21st century. To attain this goal, two conditions must be fulfilled.

The first is that we must reduce our fertility to the replacement level, or the two-child family level; the other is to maintain it at this level indefinitely.

The first condition was accomplished in 1975 when our fertility was reduced to the two-child family level. But we were not able to realise the second condition in that fertility continued to fall below this level to reach the low point of 1.5-child family level in 1985.

The continuous decline of our fertility below that two-child family level can be attributed to our comprehensive population control programme as well as to many economic, social and cultural factors favouring a small family size among our general population.

To elaborate on the above points, I have prepared three alternative population projections based on three different fertility assumptions.

In the first projection, it is assumed that our fertility will move back from the 1.5-child family level in 1985 to the replacement level of the two-child family in the year 2000, and will continue to be at this level indefinitely.

In the second projection, fertility is assumed to remain constant indefinitely at the 1.5-child family level.

In the third, it is assumed that fertility will continue to decline slightly from the 1.5-child family level in 1985 to the 1.3-child level in the year 2000.

If we succeed in moving fertility back to the two-child family level in the year 2000, the total population of Singapore will reach the peak of about 3.39 million in the year 2030 and will remain just slightly below this figure indefinitely. This means that zero population growth will be experienced from the year 2030 onwards, with births equalling deaths each year.

If our fertility is not pushed back to the two-child family level and is allowed to continue indefinitely at the 1.5-child level, our population will peak at about 3.02 million in the year 2015. After that, it will decline continuously until it reaches 2.46 million in the year 2050. During this period, deaths will progressively exceed births each year.

Our performance for the first half of 1983 has been more than fair with 5. per cent growth. If the American recovery continues, we may achieve real growth for 1983 of 6 to 7 per cent.

However, several sectors have suffered: Manufacturing down 8 per cent; external trade down 2 per cent; cargo handled down 1 per cent; tourism down 2 per cent.

We made up by boosting construction up 31 per cent, and banking and financial services up 18 per cent. So on our 18th National Day we have cause for relief and congratulations.

How has this been achieved? It is the cumulative result, since 1959, of nearly 24 years of hard work, savings for investments, and consistent policies of rewards based on merit and performance, since 1959.

For the first four to six years, we settled urgent basic problems of unrest and insecurity caused by communist subversion, demonstrations, labour strikes, walkouts, sit-ins, go-slows, riots and general political agitation.

Then in 1965, when we had about established confidence that we could get on top of the communist problems, we suffered a blow to our prospects for long-term economic viability by separation from Malaysia. Then came the withdrawal of the British bases announced in 1968.

It took another five years, to 1970, for us to establish our viability. We established it by restoring discipline and efficiency in society.

Strikes went down, social and work discipline prevailed, and the Employment Act changed the rules governing relations between management and workers. Then investments and trade grew steadily.

We maximized our assets. We had to keep morale up. In November 1964, in the depression after our communal riots, we had campaigns against beggars, stray dogs, and cattle. We had become a scruffy town.

In October 1968, we had our first Keep Singapore Clean campaign. In October 1969, we had a campaign to Keep Singapore Mosquito-Free. Our first tree-planting campaign was in June 1963. It stalled. There were too many political crises. We resumed it in 1971.

We added on the anti-litter campaign to make Singapore clean and green. By the middle 1970s, we moved on to courtesy campaigns. The first Productivity Campaign was in 1975. We were not ready for it.

The national population policies in Singapore have been dominated by fertility policies in the form of antinatalist measures commencing from the mid-1960s and postnatalist measures from the 1980s. The recent recognition that, despite the introduction of a comprehensive postnatalist policy, fertility will never return to replacement level to sustain the population size in the future resulted in a big shift in the national population programme towards immigration as the key answer to replenishing the population in the years ahead. Not surprisingly, immigration rules were expanded and relaxed to attract foreigners, especially professionals and businessmen, to relocate to Singapore and become permanent residents. Citizenship laws and procedures were liberalized to make it easier for those who had become permanent residents to take up Singapore citizenship by naturalization. The various schemes designed to lure foreigners to work and settle in the country resulted in a surge in the foreign population and, consequently, frequent grumbling about the city-state becoming too overcrowded. Lately, some of the rules meant to attract foreigners were tightened.

NEED FOR IMMIGRATION

If a population is closed against migration and is subject to a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 and a constant mortality indefinitely, the population will eventually reach a state where it will experience a rate of population growth equivalent to zero. At this point of time and thereafter, the population is said to be a stationary population possessing certain inherent properties. The size of the population willremain constant, the annual number of births and deaths will remain not only constant but equal, the age structure will be invariable, and the crude death rate equal to the inverse of the expectation of life at birth. We have observed in the previous chapter that the total fertility rate not only remained below replacement during the last forty years, but moved downward over time to touch the low of 1.2 in recent years. We also showed that this below-replacement fertility had resulted in a shortfall in the annual number of births, which would not allow the population to replenish itself in the future.

Indeed, the results of population projections prepared by the author in the 3rd edition of his book entitled The Population of Singapore revealed that the resident population of Singapore would begin to decline by around 2025 or 2030.

NEED FOR FURTHER CHANGE

We had observed that on the basis of the recommendations of the Inter-Ministerial Population Committee, the government implemented a wide range of incentive measures in 1987 aimed at encouraging women to produce more children. This was subsequently followed by a few pronatalist measures announced by the Prime Minister at the National Day Rally held in August 2000. The effectiveness of all the measures had not been very encouraging mainly because they were formulated to loosen some of the old antinatalist measures and to introduce some limited pronatalist measures. Furthermore, the socioeconomic factors favouring small family norms had continued to exert a strong influence in prolonging the movement of low fertility below the replacement level.

In an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the above measures, one must take into account the influence of the Tiger Year and Dragon Year in the Chinese lunar calendar during the period under consideration. Viewed in terms of producing babies among the Chinese community, the Tiger Year in 1998 was an inauspicious year and the Dragon Year in 2000 an auspicious year. This resulted in some distortions in the annual movement of fertility during the period from 1997 onwards. The total fertility rate (TFR) was recorded as 1.68 in 1997 when the above measures were first implemented, and one would expect an increase to be registered the very next year. Instead, the TFR witnessed a pronounced decline of 8.3 per cent to 1.54 in the Tiger Year 1998, and remained at this level in the following year. The Dragon Year 2000 experienced a break in the fertility downtrend when the TFR rose to 1.68. Despite the introduction of some pronatalist measures in 2000, the TFR resumed its downward movement in the next few years, falling to 1.48 in 2001, 1.45 in 2002, and 1.33 in 2003.

The government became extremely concerned about the continuous decline of the low fertility below the replacement level and the attendant fall in the number of births from 46,997 in 2000 to the second low of 37,485 in 2003.

In an earlier article (“When couples have fewer than two”, the Sunday Times, June 15) I discussed the impact of fertility trends in Singapore on the future size of our population.

Singapore women, as a whole, have been having too few babies to keep our population from declining in the future. But there are differences in birth patterns among women from the different ethnic and educational groups.

For instance, while Malay and Indian women have been having children at a rate of about two per family (the population replacement rate), Chinese women, on average, have been having fewer and fewer.

I will consider the implications of this trend later in the article. First, in order to understand better the population problem that faces Singapore, we need to look at some fertility figures.

Those who watch population trends find a number called the GRR (gross reproduction rate) to be a particularly useful measure of fertility.

It is the average number of daughters a woman will produce during her childbearing years — provided that she lives through the entire period.

Of course, not all women live until the end of their child-bearing period. So the actual average number of daughters born to women in the population can be calculated from the GRR by taking into account the death rate of women in this age group.

The resulting figure is the net reproduction rate (NRR).

If the NRR is exactly 1 (commonly referred to as the two-child family level, since each woman has one son and one daughter on the average), we can expect the population to replace itself in the future.

If it is less than 1, too few daughters are being born for the population to replace itself.

If it is more than 1, the size of the population will grow, since there will be more daughters than mothers.

When the NRR is exactly 1 in Singapore, the GRR will be about 1.025. This is the replacement fertility level.

Women in Singapore have been having fewer and fewer children since 1958. This decline continued into the early 1970s. In 1970, the average woman had 1.505 daughters over her lifetime.

In 1975, when the fertility rate first dropped below the replacement level of 1.025, the average woman had 1.006 daughters.

The package of pronatalist incentives implemented soon after the National Day Rally held in August 2004 could be separated into two broad groups. As noted in the previous chapter, the first group consisted of incentives designed to implement some changes to the measures introduced in the past so as to make them stronger and more effective. The second group contained entirely new measures that were quite essential for preventing any further deterioration of the exceedingly low level of fertility prevailing at the time. The formulation of the overall package in terms of financial and non-financial incentives was, in fact, viewed by the government as a “holistic and coherent approach” towards creating a more congenial environment for couples to produce and raise children in Singapore.

CHILDCARE LEAVE

One of the new pronatalist incentives introduced in 2004 was the two days of statutory childcare leave granted to each working parent, provided for by an amendment to the Employment Act passed in Parliament on 21 September 2004. With effect from 1 October 2004, parents were entitled to take two days per year of this statutory employer-paid leave if they had at least a child under seven years of age. In late 2008, the leave was extended to six days, with the first three days paid by the employer and the other three days by the government, capped at S$500 per day. The leave was granted on the basis of per parent and not per child, i.e. each parent could only take two days in a year even if there were more than one child under seven years old in the family. However, parents had full flexibility to use this leave to spend time with their children for whatever purpose since it was not predicated on other conditions such as illness of the child.

As part of the overall package of measures to support parenthood, the childcare leave allowed working parents to take time off to care for their children without any loss of income and to achieve a more harmonious work-life environment.

The childcare leave was also made available to working parents with any stepchildren or legally adopted children below the age of seven. The parents could be married, divorced, or widowed, and they could be regular employees, fixed-term contract workers, or temporary or part-time employees.

INTRODUCTION

After the attainment of replacement fertility in 1975, no changes to the national population control programme were made until the mid-1980s when measures designed to encourage the better-educated women to produce more babies and the lesser-educated to bear fewer babies were introduced. These measures were meant to influence the quality rather than the quantity of the future population to ensure an adequate supply of talented people for the small island state. The genesis of the shift towards the qualitative aspect of the population can be traced to the traditional address delivered by the Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, at the National Day Rally attended by a gathering of People's Action Party members and other specially invited guests on 14 August 1983. Appendix A reproduces the full text of his speech.

Touching on the prevailing problems and issues confronting Singapore, he talked at considerable length about the differences in fertility according to the educational level of mothers as reflected in the 1980 Population Census data. He also cited the findings, particularly those of Thomas Bouchard of the University of Minnesota, which seem to indicate that the intelligence of a child is determined more by nature (about 80 per cent) than by nurture (about 20 per cent). He expressed his concern about the lopsided pattern of procreation in Singapore where the better-educated mothers were bearing too few children, which would eventually have the undesirable effect of lowering the quality of the population in the long run. He emphasized the need to change “our policies, and try to reshape our demographic configuration so that our better-educated women will have more children to be adequately represented in the next generation”.

The Prime Minister's remarks on the above population issue in the much-heralded National Day Rally beamed live over television and reported prominently in the newspapers provoked a great debate among the general public. The debate centred on the validity of the hypothesis that the intelligence of the children is determined by the educational level of their mothers and that intelligence is dependent more on nature than nurture. As to be expected, there was no consensus among the people regarding these somewhat controversial and emotional issues.