By Chan Chi Ling
A lot of sound and fury have surrounded the recent population white paper, and for good reasons. If all goes to plan, Singapore will have 7 million people in 2030. Between now and then, the cacophony of construction work rages on as the government rushes to reclaim new land, expand transport networks, community facilities, housing. And while the white paper speaks with characteristic optimism about the long term benefits of the plan, it has downplayed its costs and thoughtlessly put the cart before the horse by letting GDP growth dictate population policy.
A plan that missed out the most important questions
The trade-off is a real one: an aging, shrinking citizen workforce will mean slower economic growth. The question of whether we should have greater influx of immigrants to drive economic growth or opt for slower growth with less rapid increase in population is, as I have argued before, not one that can be answered by economics. It is at heart about the kind of society we want to live in, and the kind of values we subscribe to: if we do not recalibrate our consumerist aspirations, economic growth naturally takes precedence; if we really care about sustainability, livability and cohesion, it would be about children, the aged and who should be admitted and naturalized as Singaporeans.
Instead of aiming to take in 15,000 to 25,000 new citizens and 30,000 PRs each year to "ensure a pool of suitable potential citizens" and thinking of people in terms of labor inputs producing corresponding labor outputs, it would have focused a lot more on who we are bringing in. It would have been more sensitive to the fact that population growth per-se does not necessarily lead to economic growth, and that the nature and composition of population growth is as critical as its rate.
This is what decides whether Singapore will become a new nation of immigrants (as we have been), or an alien-nation; a hub, or a home.
This is also why immigration debates in many countries are centered on entry criteria more than quotas: should there be a more discriminate and selective admission system? What criteria should be emphasized? Should we consider using a points system, as countries like Australia and Canada have? How can an immigration system best maximize gains from population diversity and minimize cultural friction? Alas, nothing is mentioned in the plan beyond a "citizenship journey" and English courses run by the People’s Association and NTUC, as if putting people through one-off state-funded classes are going to solve complex problems of integration. Contrast that with more serious approaches taken towards integration of immigrants in Canada's white paper, and one realizes there is more than meets the eye to assimilation.
Misplaced priorities?
The irony that comes with a population policy driven by GDP growth is that it tries to serve ‘Singaporeans’ who don't even exist. The white paper is a long litany of construction plans to keep up with future increases in population, which is completely within policy control. In a somewhat perverse way, the plan is creating the very problem it is also trying to solve. As long as GDP growth is the key determinant of population policy (and it doesn't look like this mindset is going to change), then there will always be a need for population growth, and always a need for more houses, buses, trains, schools and hospitals to meet these demands.
The pursuit for growth, as long as we are on a hedonic treadmill, is endless. But there are real physical limits to how much a small island like ours can hold before sustainability becomes a problem, and real psychological limits to how much change a generation of people can take. Especially for a small island state like Singapore, achieving economic growth through population growth means kicking the can further down the road: what happens in 2050 when the new Singaporeans and PRs we bring in also age? Furthermore, why use current tax dollars to finance the wellbeing and lifestyles of a massive influx of future immigrants, when there are so many pressing social spending, healthcare and cost of living concerns now? Who pays and who benefits?
A declining birth rate and greying population is not an easy demographic challenge to tackle, nor is it a problem unique to Singapore. But the approach that a government takes tells one a lot about its priorities. A population policy that places Singaporeans' welfare - as opposed to economic growth targets - at its heart would have been about children and the elderly. Japan, which confronts the same problem, except worse, has its population white paper centered almost exclusively on children and childcare support.
It is also striking how policy on coping with an aging population is completely absent in the paper despite the fact that it is the most important demographic problem a sound population policy should be addressing. By 2030, the number of citizens aged 65 years and above will triple to 900,000 by 2030; 1 in 5 of the population will be an elderly. How does the government see the old-age problem? The white paper implies that the old-age problem is not about the aged amongst us, but about the economy:
"For society as a whole, a declining old-age support ratio would mean rising taxes and a heavier economic load on a smaller base of working-age Singaporeans. A shrinking and ageing population would also mean a smaller, less energetic workforce, and a less vibrant and innovative economy. Companies may not find enough workers. Business activity would slow, and job and employment opportunities would shrink. It would become more difficult to match the higher aspirations of a better educated and mobile population. Young people would leave for more exciting and growing global cities. This would hollow out our population and workforce, and worsen our ratio of younger to older Singaporeans." (The Population White Paper, 2013)
Had it prioritized Singaporeans’ welfare over economic growth as the end, that same paragraph might have looked like this:
For society as a whole, a declining old-age support ratio would mean an increase in generational burden and greater strains to the existing family structure. There will be greater demand for elderly social services such as nursing homes, and health service costs will increase. These create strains within families that could exacerbate intergenerational tension, bringing about social isolation of elderly people from the community. All these threaten family ties, harmony and the general wellbeing of society.
The policy measures following from this would have been very different: it would have been about creating stronger social safety nets for the elderly, reducing childrearing burdens, providing better support for single-parent families, increasing inter-generational dialogues, encouraging innovations in elder support infrastructure, investments in the silver industry. Greater emphases on these priorities might go a longer way to managing Singapore’s population problems than the current plan, which might paradoxically be feeding into the problem of dipping fertility rate.
The government has always prided itself on its ability to think long-term and plan well ahead. In its zeal to confront future problems and meet economic targets, it seems to have overlooked the most important priorities of the present: wellbeing, sustainability, values. The result is a great deal of construction noise for the next couple of years, but to what end? As the debate continues in Parliament over the population plan and alternatives are presented, let’s hope that the right questions will be asked and priorities re-examined so Singapore can be a nation - and not an –alien-nation – in the making.
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Chan Chi Ling is a Political Science (Honors) candidate at Stanford University.