DECLINING BIRTH RATES

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DECLINING BIRTH RATES: 12.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo asked the Minister for Community Development and Sports (a) what are the likely underlying trends for the declining birth rates in Singapore; and (b) while the Government has been using financial incentives to encourage couples to have more children, to what extent has this approach been successful.

The Minister for Community Development and Sports (Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim): Sir, Singapore's total fertility rate for the year 2002 was at a historic low of 1.37. The declining birth rates are largely due to the rising singlehood rate, low marital fertility and uncertain economic conditions these past few years. For example:

- More people are remaining single either from lack of socialisation opportunities or deliberate choice.

- Couples are marrying later and as a woman's natural fertility declines with age from the late 20s, later marriages result in later and fewer births.

- Competing workplace demands and career priorities could have affected some couples' decision to have children. Some even consider children as unimportant to marriage. The proportion of childless couples has tripled since 1980 to 6%, while one-child families have more than doubled from 6% to 14%.

Evidence shows that economic performance and the number of births are closely correlated. The procreation

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measures introduced in 2000 have unfortunately coincided with the recent economic downturn, and the success of these measures is unclear.

Having children is a personal choice, the decision of which is affected by a whole host of reasons, financial costs being one of them. Therefore, financial measures can at best encourage couples who plan to have children to have more of them earlier. These measures may not be able to persuade couples to have children if they do not want to. Therefore, apart from tackling cost issues, my Ministry, in consultation with the Working Committee on Marriage and Procreation and the Ministerial Committee chaired by Minister Lim Hng Kiang, is addressing other factors that affect couples' childbearing decisions, eg, lack of time and energy. My Ministry is developing more affordable infant care and childcare options, besides promoting work-life friendly practices, to help individuals balance their personal, domestic and work commitments.

In this connection, my Ministry is currently seeking public feedback on how to help families care for and have children. We are inviting feedback on the Baby Bonus Scheme and Work-Life Balance, and the details can be found on the Feedback Unit's website. We are also holding focus group discussions on marriage and procreation and those interested are more than welcome to attend.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo: Sir, would the Minister consider taking a two-pronged approach other than targeting at couples? Would the Minister also actually stretch a little bit down to children because he knows that very often we are addressing an issue that is just on the surface. But, to my mind, I think this is more a question of family values and whether such an approach would be taken at school where we will begin to continue to time pump in the message of the need for students to

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be aware of the fact that when it comes to their time, they should be responsible adults doing their part for society and for themselves.

Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: Sir, unfortunately, the Minister for Education is not in the House. I would have asked him to answer the question. But to answer the Member's question, we are working with the Ministry of Education through a variety of programmes, one of which is called the School Family Education Programme. Together with some schools that we have partnered, we work through the schools, not only in terms of promoting some of the family values that we all hold dear in Singapore, but also to help our school children, in terms of some of the issues that they confront. So we are working with the schools in some of these issues that the Member has raised. I am not too sure whether we will be successful in implanting in them the need to have a family. But I certainly agree with her that if we can start them young to understand the need to have a family and children as something that we hold dear in Singapore, we may have a chance in bucking this trend.

Dr Lily Neo (Jalan Besar): May I ask the Minister whether the financial incentives should also be extended to the first child to encourage more young couples to start a family? May I also ask him whether his Ministry is doing enough to make the environment more conducive to encourage couples to have children? For example, are there enough quality and affordable childcare centres, especially for infants, and in view of our increasing dual income families, is his Ministry doing enough to promote the mindset of both parents being providers as well as nurturers?

Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: Sir, to the last question, I will leave it to the families to decide on how to balance the

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family chores between the husband and wife. It is very difficult for Government to intervene to tell the husbands to take part of the role from the mothers. But I agree with her on the role of parents. However, most men nowadays realise that they have a role to play in not just providing for the family but in nurturing their children too. For example, we have a Centre for Fathering that has been around for several years to encourage fathers to be more responsible towards the development of their children.

I agree with the Member, Sir, that we need to provide enough supporting structure for our families. So childcare centres have been provided. We have about 638 childcare centres in Singapore. There are still sufficient places, and there is a wide range of childcare centres, not only for the top end or those who prefer more enrichment classes, but even for basic childcare facilities, there are enough places. The challenge is actually at the infant care and that is where we are trying to encourage the development. We have been working with some of the institutions, such as KKCH, where they have started a very succesful infant care. We have also worked with some VWOs. Mr Lim Hng Kiang has announced recently that the Government is looking into this area actively. So we hope to finish some of the studies in this particular area so that we can help young couples who have decided to have children to be able to balance both work and family commitments.

On the incentives for the first child, I agree with the Member that we do not have any incentives on, what we call, the non-tax measures. The Baby Bonus Scheme is meant for the second and third child. The first-child benefits are channelled through the various tax measures. But having said that, Sir, so far we do not see a problem, in terms of families having one child. The challenge

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is to try and tweak the incentive in such a way to encourage families to have a second and third child. And that is why when the Baby Bonus Scheme was announced in 2000, it was meant only for the second and third child. And there is a reason for that, Sir. From the financial point of view, having two or three children, the cost incurred, in terms of the expenditure for childcare needs, will certainly increase with the number of children. At the moment, we are not considering non-tax incentives. But there are currently tax incentives for having the first child.

Mdm Halimah Yacob: Sir, may I ask the Minister, apart from financial incentives, what other incentives can the Ministry provide to employers to encourage them perhaps to have other work options, such as flexi time, part time, three-quarter time work, or tele-working, because many of these work options that I have just cited are actually in a very preliminary stage in Singapore compared to many developed and even some developing countries. So I think it is obviously a case where incentives are needed for employers to explore some of these other work options to encourage women who do not want to leave the workplace but, at the same time, want to have more children. Hopefully, we will be able to increase our fertility rate.

Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: Sir, I agree with the Member that we have to find a way to help our mothers to balance work and life. I think the Member may be aware that, since about three or four years ago, when Mr Speaker was the Minister then, we had started the Work-Life Unit in MCDS to look into promoting, what we call, family-friendly workplaces. A lot of the work has been through persuasion. We have also managed to develop a group of work-life consultants. And, here companies can tap on some of the subsidies which are available to help

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them redesign some of their workplaces to allow women to balance work and life equally.

Having said that, Sir, I would like to say that the progress has been very good as far as MCDS is concerned. More companies are coming on board to adopt some of the work-life practices that we have been encouraging. It is new. But after three years or so of implementing it, more than 16 companies, mainly large companies, are on board in this programme. We are also trying to encourage some small companies. And if they can see the value of having a family that is happy, in being able to balance both work and life, I think that would be good for the company. So our approach has been through persuasion, providing some incentives to companies that are prepared to look at their work structures so that they can redesign it in order to make it convenient for working mothers to balance both work and family commitments.

Mdm Cynthia Phua (Aljunied): Sir, would the Minister examine why there are so few infant care centres and review the various regulations that govern the setting up of these infant care centres?

Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: Sir, the basic problem with infant care centres is that we need a high degree of specialisation because these are young children between 0-18 months. So, the ratio is something that we have to think through carefully. More often than not, we just do not need a childcare specialist but someone with some nursing capabilities.

Secondly, because of that, the cost would be high. At the moment, we have extended the childcare subsidy also to infant care, and it is a question of how do we balance this together with the development of the industry. It is new in Singapore. If my memory serves me

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right, about seven organisations are running infant care. We are looking into helping more VWOs and even private-sector companies to come into this industry and open up more infant care centres for our young families.