Singapore's Population Problem

Blogged by James Preece on 3rd August 2012

The population density of the United Kingdom is 660 people per square mile and we are forever hearing that the country is full now and there are too many people especially when irresponsible fools like myself insist on having children. The Phillipines has a population density of 795 people per square mile which is obviously far too many. People need condoms!

Meanwhile over in Singapore the population density is an incredible 18,513 people per square mile. Yet for some reason the government there seems to think there is a population problem?

In 1986 the government also decided to revamp its family planning program to reflect its identification of the low birth rate as one of the country's most serious problems. The old family planning slogan of "Stop at Two" was replaced by "Have Three or More, if You Can Afford It." A new package of incentives for large families reversed the earlier incentives for small families. It included tax rebates for third children, subsidies for daycare, priority in school enrollment for children from large families, priority in assignment of large families to Housing and Development Board apartments, extended sick leave for civil servants to look after sick children and up to four years' unpaid maternity leave for civil servants. Pregnant women were to be offered increased counseling to discourage "abortions of convenience" or sterilization after the birth of one or two children. Despite these measures, the mid-1986 to mid-1987 total fertility rate reached a historic low of 1.44 children per woman, far short of the replacement level of 2.1. The government reacted in October 1987 by urging Singaporeans not to "passively watch ourselves going extinct."

[link]

The cause of Singapore's troubles? Well, in the 1960's they swallowed hook, line and sinker the story that children were a problem. They paid women S$10,000 to be sterilized after the birth of their second child. Now they are paying women S$20,000 if they will have a fourth!

Children are the future of our families, our countries and our civilisation. When governments stop people from having children, it's like a loan - we might feel richer today, but in the future we will be poorer.

So we come to the cause of this blog entry. A reader sent this in... Mentos (the mint people) have made a rap video for Singapore National Night, designed to encourage people to have babies. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry but I should tell you not to watch this in front of the kids.

Is something that shallow really going to solve the problems in Singapore?

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Reader Comments

Scout said...

Singapore is a developed, highly prosperous country which generates loads of jobs - the unemployment rate there has long been very low. This means that despite having a very high population density, the country is more than able to provide for all of its citizens.

You are not being fair in comparing the demographic situation in Singapore with that of the Phillippines and other poorer countries where the challenges brought about by population growth are much greater. Singapore is a rich nation with lots of jobs for workers - so much so that it happily absorbs huge volumes of immigration and is trying to reverse the low birth rate. In some of the other countries with high population density and high population growth, the position could not be more different

James said...

"the country is more than able to provide for all of its citizens"

You don't get it do you - no country provides for it's citizens. The citizens provide for themselves. The best any country can do is shuffle that provision around by taxing some and giving to others.

Singapore demonstrates that a country can have a high population density and be rich. Your theory of "less people = more money" doesn't work.

Less people means less farming, less mining, less trading, less working. Less people means less of everything so while there are less people to "provide for" there are also less people to do the providing.

Scout said...

If you imagine Singapore's economy is based around primary economic sectors like farming and mining then you're wrong, James. It isn't. Singapore is fortunate to have very advanced hi-tech industries and a sophisticated financial services sector. In addition, Singapore has a large, highly-skilled workforce to do all of those jobs that need doing. In poorer countries, the picture is very different. You are just not being reasonable or realistic in pointing to Singapore and trying to use that example as an excuse for ignoring the demographic issues experienced by poorer countries.

Birth control is not the answer to everything. Actually, like Mark I'm of the view that some analysts over-focus on birth-control to the exclusion of long-term underlying problems such as poor education, poor housing, poor healthcare and the structural economic unfairnesses endemic in the global economy. But the fact remains that for a lot of families, having fewer children and spacing childbirths is the only route out of poverty and the only chance for giving the next generation a better opportunity. To ignore this in policy-making is to commit an act of gross social injustice.

Misrepresenting and exploiting the situation in mega-rich Singapore in order to justify the Catholic Church's opposition to birth control does not really lead anywhere. It might please some of the Catholic faithful and make them even more self-righteous and unreasonable than they are already, but few others are going to be convinced. The actual reality is that the policy of the Catholic Church is encouraging families to have children they cannot adequately care for and fuelling an AIDS epidemic

Mark Dobson said...

“If you imagine Singapore's economy is based around primary economic sectors like farming and mining then you're wrong, James.”

That doesn’t affect his argument though does it? You just have to make a few modifications:

Less people means less production in advanced hi-tech industries, less income from sophisticated financial services, less working.

New Friend said...

Less people also means there are gaps which can be filled by migration from over populated areas, which is exactly what is happening in Singapore right now. As anyone who has actually been there, rather than just trot out meaningless statistics, will tell you there are rather a lot of Filipinos in Singapore. Some are doing the cleaning and caring jobs that no-one else wants but many others are filling high tech vacancies, for which they have been educated in the Philippines but for which no work is available in their home country. As the Philippine economy is highly dependent upon the OCW (overseas contract worker) to attempt to build up the indigenous population in Singapore, without matching population growth reduction programmes in the the Philippines, will just make matters worse.

Jonathan said...

"there are gaps which can be filled by migration from over populated areas"

The people coming to Singapore are coming from over-populated areas? From areas more densely populated than Singapore? That's not right. The trend for almost all migration is from under-populated areas to 'over'-populated ones. Migration follows the wealth and this is in the areas of high density population. You can't ask for a clearer demonstration that James' point is right-more people means more wealth.

New Friend said...

Jonathan

I like to see some evidence to back up that claim. If you said that migration tends to be from poor places to richer ones I would agree but to go on from that and claim that a simple, one dimensional, answer is that "more people means more wealth" is complete and absolute nonsense for all the reasons given in previous posts. You need resources to create wealth alongside the manpower. Squeeze too many people into too small a space, without the resources and infrastructure to support them, and problems will surely multiply.

Yours is the standard Catholic answer to this question which is trotted out whenever it comes up. As soon as it is examined and debunked silence follows for it does not, and cannot, stand up.

Mark Dobson said...

I decided some time ago not to waste my time responding to NF, who in any case subsequently said that I was "best ignored".

Scout said...

What I am getting at is that Singapore is developed enough and has a strong enough infrastructure to support a high population density (though the population density still causes certain problems). Other countries with less developed economies simply don't. The fact that population density is not as much a cause for concern in Singapore as it is in the Philippines does not mean James is justified in casually and callously dismissing the very serious challenges posed to the Philippines by its population issue.

My sad experience of discussing these kind of issues with strict Catholics is that they have already made their mind up, so facts and legitimate arguments mean little to them. Whereas other people look at the situation and then think objectively about what the right response should be, strict Catholics have already made up their minds in advance that contraceptives are evil and should not play any part in demographic policy. They simply lack the moral and intellectual capacity to consider the greater evils brought about by the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and large families doomed by their circumstances to languish in poverty generation after generation. When challenged, they lash out at everybody who is trying to change things for the better, with their tactics ranging from misrepresentation to calumny. But usually they are too absorbed with how morally righteous they imagine themselves to be to realise or care about this.

Anthony said...

Even if you have valid points, Scout, they are lost in your ad hominem attacks and generalisations regarding Catholics. Why not stick to the issues?

New Friend said...

Anthony

It might be an uncomfortable fact but fact it is nonetheless that one of the issues in this debate are the attitudes held by many Catholics over this issue and as described by Scout. You might regard them as ad hominem attacks but they simply cannot be ignored, for they form the basis of the problem in several places, including where I am now, the Philippines. Not raising them means you end up only discussing the symptoms and not the disease.

I have little doubt I will be roundly condemned for even thinking such things, but in your heart of hearts I think many of you know it is true.

Mark Dobson said...

I, for one, do appreciate that situations vary from country to country, and that a simple comparision of numbers can be misleading.

However, one might suggest that instead of intervening in people’s sex lives, the state might concentrate on development, the elimination of poverty and employment.

Strangely, this sounds quite similar what people always say about the Church.

New Friend said...

"intervening in people’s sex lives"

Who but the Church is trying to do that?

All anyone else wants to do is educate and inform. Once done the choices remain personal. To deny people the information is to intervene.

Of course the other matters are also important, as I don't think anyone will deny, but to deliberately leave the people uninformed, and to restrict choice, is quite simply irresponsible behaviour.

Mark Dobson said...

I decided some time ago not to waste my time responding to NF, who in any case subsequently said that I was "best ignored".

New Friend said...

Whoops, note to myself "must try harder". In my defence I did not notice who posted the original comment as, unusually, it actually made some sense.

Jonathan said...

"Who but the Church is trying to do that?"

The Gates' who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars intervening in other people's sex lives.

When you agree with the intervention it's education and information and when you don't it's propaganda.

New Friend said...

Jonathan

No they aren't and this is a point that Catholics don't get, but really ought to.

The Gates, and others will the same agenda, seek to educate and then allow individuals to make their choice. They provide information and the means to make their choices. There is no compulsion or interference.

The Church seeks to deny those people that information so that they cannot make their own choices. They seek to deny people the means to make other choices if the people do find the information. This IS compulsion and interference.

I have no issue at all with the Church putting over it's message to it's membership and resolutely condemning the use of ABC if that is what it believes. What I object to is them seeking to deny others the opportunity to put over an alternative message and making the means to respond to it available if that is the choice they make.

Only the Church is interfering by seeking to withhold information.

This is particularly pertinent as the RH bill in the Philippines is about to be put to the vote, after 14 years of debate. It's very modest measures are not just directly opposed by the Church, with rallies and threats of ex communication for any politician who votes in favour, but it's proposals distorted and misrepresented from the pulpit and on TV. Your Church is an alternative government here and the battle being waged is more about who really controls the country than about the RH bill.

Salsibury John said...

an excellent blog James and you're right...it couldn't be a more crass song and video about something intended to be so intimate and beautiful between spouses. The song/rap has at least one redeeming feature and that is that it's a husband talking to his wife. Thankful for small mercies I guess.

Salisbury John said...

In 2010 it was estimated that the World's population can fit comfortably in Texas As a whole (water included) Texas has a square footage of about 7,488, 166,118,400. The then current world population was approximately 6.8 billion. (with an estimated growth of about 4 billion in the next 50 years)
Divide that figure into the square footage of Texas and it results in each person having over 1000 (1089 to be closer to exact) square feet to themselves.
even John Lennon saw thrugh the nonsense behind the over population myth
http://spuc-director.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/john-lennon-regarded-over-population-as.html

Mockery of the Sacraments said...

I'm not concerned about overpopulation. I think we could do a lot worse than build on some more of our country. Shifting the burden of taxation onto landowners rather than wage earners would do a lot to make family life more affordable in the UK.

New Friend said...

Unbelieveable! The weakness of this argument must be obvious to all, as at least one poster has already pointed out.

I once read that the entire population of the world could stand on the Isle of Wight! What does that really mean though? Standing shoulder to shoulder they could not move, grow crops or even make new babies.

Statistics like this are meaningless. What needs to be looked at is whether a population has the resources to sustain itself and develop. Singapore is a commercial centre and is really a part of Malaysia. It is not a true entity in it's own right and is almost entirely dependent on imported food supplies.

Density per square mile is absolutely no guide at all to whether a country can sustain itself. A density of 1 per square mile in a waterless dessert would not work, whilst 18,513 per square mile in a place, where the food is imported and high rise buildings are standard, can work.

There are places where the population can grow without difficulty, but there are others where there are already too many and adding others just piles on the misery.

As many know I have direct and current experience of the Philippines, where the population has risen from 25 million to 100 million in 50 years. Yes, the density per square mile is still relatively low when looked at on a countrywide basis but the people don't live spread evenly all over the country. Much of the country is also mountainous and unfarmable.

Manila is the city with the highest population density in the world at 111,575 per square mile. I have been there. It isn't nice. It is also the most heavily polluted city on earth. Contrast that with Singapore! Can you imagine a quadrupling of that population in the next 50 years? The living conditions for many are already beyond most people's comprehension. Abandoned street children abound because their mothers simply cannot cope. They run like naked feral animals. Why do people go there? As in the UK in the past the rural poor migrate to the cities to find work for there IS work in Manila, poorly paid but some. In the provinces there is often no work at all, so people live off their wits, fishing, hunting and gathering.

With a growth rate of over 2% per annum the situation is just getting worse and the Church continues to oppose even simple steps to educate the people on how to limit their families, which is something most would wish to do, but don't know how.

It is easy to sit in the cosy west and feel that having babies is a God given right. It is more difficult to face the reality of this in Manila when you cannot feed those you already have.

mike cliffson said...

NF We slogged this one out in a previous post.
Step back,take a long view.See the woods. Olimpic opening night depicted history its way: we heard jerusalem, saw the dark satanic mills arise.
An aspect of historical reality.
A scientific and agricultural and financial revolution.
We did it. Warts and all.Wars and all.There's a heck of a lot living space about off earth too, btw. What the brits did works, NOTHING else does, materially.
This is racist?
On the contrary!Touch of national humilty ,(not leftists blasphemous God did wrong to inflict britain on the world weep moan capitalists upperclasses contemplate your-navel and -despair)but good Godfearing Christian humilty, needed
If the good Lord blesses the sweat of feckless protestant Brits , He'll bless the sweat of ANYBODY else
AND the world is still living and growing on what we did
You can exploit the poor, widows and orphans , rob a nd steal-call it jizzia if you like, to get rich.This transfers wealth.It doesnt create it.
You can create wealth. (Often , the verysame people do both.)
I was lied to at school that Protestantism was a key ingredient.
Rubbish.
If Catholic , it'd ve been twenty times better.
God willing we would have avoided the -only so-much to go round archmoaner and inspirer of Marx and Darwin, Mr Malthus.
He mistook a a hiccup, after England was exporting agrultural products in the 18th century and then total poulation temporaily outsripped supply and imports hadn't got going enough, for the norm.
He was scandalized at the sufferings of the agricultural, poor, again, all about how HE sufferred seeing them shortsighted little goodytwoshoes, it was a bout HIS miserable protestant sensitivities,and he said the problem ,as malthusites continue to do,was The POOR HAVE TOO MANY CHILDREN.
How trite!

New Friend said...

Mike

I fail to see any connection at all between British history and the need to improve the situation in over crowded places like Manila. They are different situations requiring different solutions. One size does not fit all.

I therefore think that it is you, not me, who needs to step back and see the woods and not the trees. These are real and not theoretical problems.

If anyone else can make more sense of Mike's reply in this context then I will be pleased to read it.

mike cliffson said...

Plenty other people , you know, seen dirt streets with street boys organized by fagins, 8yrolds stripping motors, hovels filled with despairing starvelings villages emptyinginto towns..... not evryone is sitting comfortably then you'll begin.
What the philipines need to do is cut their reliance on what The USA intelligentsia say and create wealth the way the British showed the world, which is NOT onesize fitsall exactly, thats Mr Joe stalin, Mr mao, Mr EU and other eurocrats, wealth parasites not creators, they're the onssize fitsall.
Catholic fredom the glorious liberty of the sons of God, will work even better !
The brit way , done by catholics,or no way.
Rather than than emasculate themselves.
Men , not mice.
That simple.

New Friend said...

Mike

You are trying to compare chalk with cheese. The "British" way was NOT the Catholic way was it? If we had have allowed the population to expand faster than the resources available we might well have remained in a mess, similar to that found in Manila. We didn't. We educated ourselves, limited the growth in our numbers and allowed immigration to fill any gaps, a policy which continues to this day. How you can possibly claim this as a triumph of Catholicism beats me.

The argument that you, and some others, present on this issue reminds me of the theory that says you can always win when gambling, if you are brave enough. This theory says that all you need do is to keep on doubling your bet and you must win, the law of averages ensures this. It is nonsense of course because, just as with your theory, it takes no account of any other influences. It assumes that your bet will be accepted and that the resources exist to pay it.

Keep on expanding your numbers you say and those people will create the wealth. Neat idea but totally wrong. Wealth does not arrive on it's own. It needs resources. Food, water, raw materials and space for starters. If you try to grow at times, and in places, where any of these are lacking, problems will follow.

The earth is a finite place in terms of natural resources. We cannot make it any bigger and populating another planet almost certainly an impractical idea. Nothing can expand for ever in a finite place. We are not at capacity yet everywhere, but we are in some places. We can move people around, but I suspect you would object to compulsory relocations. Eventually we are going to run out of essential resources well before we run out of room. The consequences would be horrible. Disease, famine and war. When we can avoid them, to continue to argue for unrestricted population growth is irresponsible religious theory dressed up as a practical public policy. I doubt that you convince anyone but those who put that belief before all else.

Scout said...

Can anyone explain to me what on earth Mike is going on about?

Mark Dobson said...

I'm afraid not.

mike cliffson said...

Tough

Catherine said...

"Birth Control is no new thing in human experience, and it has been practised in societies of the most various types and fortunes. But there can be little doubt that at the present time it is a test issue between two widely different interpretations of the word civilization, and of what is good in life and conduct. The way in which men and women range themselves in this controversy is more simply and directly indicative of their general intellectual quality than any other single indication. I do not wish to imply by this that the people who oppose are more or less intellectual than the people who advocate Birth Control, but only that they have fundamentally contrasted general ideas,—that, mentally, they are DIFFERENT. Very simple, very complex, very dull and very brilliant persons may be found in either camp, but all those in either camp have certain attitudes in common which they share with one another, and do not share with those in the other camp." From the Introduction by H G Wells to 'The Pivot of Civilisation' by M.Sanger.

which is why T S Elliott was so right when he wrote:
"The World is trying to experiment with attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide."
Thoughts After Lambeth, 1931

so thank you James and Ella for playing your unique part in 'redeeming the time' we are in in God's good time.

New Friend said...

Catherine

Elegant rhetoric, albeit somewhat out of date, which I am sure will be much discussed amongst the poor and hungry in Manila in the coming days, between their forays to find enough rice to feed their familiies.

Thomas Bridge said...

Now they are paying women S$20,000 if they will have a fourth!

This is not quite correct. For a start, $20,000 starts per child at the third child.

More importantly, the $20,000 is off your tax bill, not a direct cash payment. This is an important but subtle difference - Singapore is a low tax society - you have to be earning around $20,000 a year to be paying tax, and if you already have two children, that goes up to $28,000 (or roughly 14,000 sterling). If your household income on a single earner is 50,000 (or 25k sterling) with three children, your taxes payable are SGD690).

This is actually a very subtle form of Eugenics.