White Paper is about the economy, not babies

Both proponents and critics of the White Paper have the misconception that improving the total fertility rate (TFR) will reduce the need for migrants and enable Singapore to maintain a “strong Singaporean core”.

This notion must be disabused because it leads our parliamentarians and policymakers down the wrong track. Also, Singaporeans should not be made to feel that they should accept high levels of migration because it is their fault for not having more babies.

We should be clear about the two main justifications for migration: Long-term demographic challenges (low fertility and an ageing population) and short-term economic growth (to address labour shortage issues).

TFR is all about the former, which we should not conflate with the latter. We have let in so many people on our island in the last decade not to make up for Singaporeans not having babies but to address labour shortages to achieve our economic goals.

The Institute of Policy Studies paper, Scenarios of Future Population Growth and Change in Singapore (2011), showed that increasing TFR, even to 1.85, is not going to make much difference to the resident population.

In 2030, the difference in the citizen population between a TFR scenario of 1.24 and 1.85 is 110,000 persons (3 per cent). So, improving the TFR is not going to stop our Singapore core from shrinking or ageing.

This does not mean, though, that the State should not do its best to ensure that all families get as much support as possible to ensure high quality of life.

The Population White Paper states that to maintain the citizen population as though we had a TFR of 2.1, we need a maximum of 25,000 new citizens per year. It envisages that the Permanent Resident population would remain stable, even with an annual intake of 30,000.

The remaining migrants are allowed in purely for economic reasons, that is, for every person who comes here to replace our shrinking citizenship, more persons are allowed in as transient workers. This is what the debate should focus on instead of lumping economic and demographic issues together. The question should be: What are the alternatives to increasing the population with more transient workers than citizens?

For example, what can be done to get more people here into the workforce? After all, there is, at any one time, more than 30 per cent of women who are not doing paid work and many people above age 65 who want to continue working. Singapore students, too, can be encouraged to participate more actively in part-time work by further opening up the economy to them.

Second, how can we increase productivity of the workforce?

Letting in more transient workers is counterproductive, as cheap labour lessens the incentive for businesses to improve productivity.

These are not easy questions to answer. So, for starters, let us stop confusing workforce issues with babies. This would lead to a clearer debate on what strategies we should employ to address short-term economic issues and long-term demographic issues.