Whatever the incentives offered, I believe the Government is smart enough not to expect too many babies will be produced by the citizens. Over the decades, it has created an environment that is no longer conducive to producing babies and raising kids – high cost of living, low income, unstable job, a competitive and stressful society, global trend of falling birth rate among developed societies, and in Singapore at least a generation of population being indoctrinated (since young) about the negative aspect of marrying young and having more than two babies. The Government knows all these problems – largely created by them.
What the Government is doing and it will soon intensify its effort on it, is to build a “strong case” to justify bringing in more non-citizens here – through pushing the blame to the citizens. To be honest, the Government has been quite successful so far : a complaint of too many foreign adults here has now gotten the population to talk in media or public about whether they could produce an additional or two more babies! An issue of too many foreign adults has now become an issue of how to encourage the citizens to give birth to more babies! Either the Government is too cunning or its citizens are too daft! Full story
