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Jean Iau

Five years into her marriage to a finance executive, Clare* is still doing the sums on leaving behind a life unencumbered by the high price of parenthood.
At 31, the Singaporean doctor instead finds herself wondering if she will feel different about their “dink” (dual income, no kids) lifestyle in another three years.
“The thought of having kids also feels more like an obligation just to complete the nuclear family,” she said. “I see so many more disadvantages about having children, rather than being dinks.”
Clare is not alone. She and her husband are among a growing cohort of Singaporean couples choosing to delay having children, or opting out entirely, even as the city state’s fertility rate has dropped to a historic low of 0.87 – deep into territory that threatens outright population decline.
Married Singaporeans who spoke to This Week in Asia said a variety of factors had influenced their decision, from prioritising their careers to concerns about the cost of raising a child – to simply losing the freedom to do as they wished.

Project manager Cara Lee, 31, has ruled out having children altogether. Unwilling to sacrifice her lifestyle and hobbies, she also does not find the company of children rewarding, especially given the extra time commitment. On top of that, she has a brother with special needs who requires much of her attention.
Yet Lee is also worried that Singapore could become overreliant on immigration to sustain itself and fail to address the cause of Singaporeans not having children, such as the costs involved and the need to balance work and family life.
“I am concerned that we will become a city of expats like Abu Dhabi,” she said, referring to the Emirati city where local citizens account for fewer than 20 per cent of the total populace. “Increasing immigration may address population numbers, but it doesn’t address the underlying reasons why many people choose to delay having children or not have them at all.”
Earlier this year, Singapore formed the Marriage and Parenthood Reset Workgroup, chaired by cabinet minister Indranee Rajah, to look into everything from the affordability of raising children to housing access, employer flexibility and preschool provision.
Its findings are due next year, but the prime minister has already tempered expectations.

Speaking at a dialogue on June 8, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong told the audience that low fertility was a puzzle no government had successfully solved.
Going forward, he said Singapore’s approach would be less about offering cash incentives and more about creating an environment where the true costs of parenthood – childcare, education and housing, to name a few – felt more manageable.
Immigration would also have a role to play, he acknowledged, “given that our own fertility rates are not likely to go up sharply”.
“We should welcome people to work here,” Wong said. “We should then have some of them who share our values and way of life to become Singaporeans, just as many of us, all of us in fact, trace our roots not just here but trace our roots to countries further afield.”
The flow of immigrants would “continue to be controlled”, he stressed, while declining to set a new population target. “We’re not talking about a very high figure at all … We are just trying to maintain stability and to avoid population decline.”


Population shrinkage
Experts told This Week in Asia that Singapore, which crossed the threshold of being a “super-aged” society this year, faced a genuine risk of population decline, compounded by low fertility rates globally that could make immigration harder to sustain long term.
“The risk is certainly real,” said Kalpana Vignehsa, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies. “But it is important to distinguish between population decline and rapid population collapse.”
She noted that population trends unfolded over decades, since today’s births determine the working-age population 20 to 30 years from now, meaning even an immediate fertility rebound would not show results for some time.
Given the low fertility rate, “some degree of long-term population decline increasingly looks like the baseline scenario rather than the exception”, Vignehsa said.
“The question is less about whether decline can be completely avoided than how gradual it is and how well Singapore adapts to it.”

International evidence suggested financial incentives rarely sustained fertility increases on their own, she said, though they did help families who already intended to have children.
“Young adults today are asking not simply, ‘Can we afford another child?’ They are asking, ‘Can we realistically combine careers, caregiving, ageing parents, housing aspirations and personal well-being over the next 20 years?’” she said.
A family-friendly society therefore needed to provide flexible work, reliable childcare, supportive workplaces, housing certainty and a culture in which raising children did not feel incompatible with pursuing a meaningful career, Vignehsa argued.
“Parents today often feel they must devote extraordinary amounts of time, emotional energy and financial resources to raising each child,” she said. “Many people are experiencing not only financial scarcity but time scarcity and emotional scarcity. These are much harder challenges for policy to address.”
Costs aside, sociologist Tan Ern Ser said would-be parents were also putting off having children because of how pessimistic they felt about the state of the world today.
“They see a world that is not conducive to raising children. They are afraid of producing a child who is incapable of surviving the kind of world we live in,” he said.

Migrants vs machines
Singapore’s low birth rate and limitations on migrant flows meant it must “harness technology well in order to do the things we want to do and to become more productive”, the prime minister stressed at last month’s dialogue session.
Though the city’s growth model historically combined labour force expansion with productivity improvements, Vignehsa said “going forward, the balance is likely to shift”.
“AI, automation and higher productivity can offset some labour shortages, but probably not all of them.”
Tan agreed that technological advances could mitigate the need for population growth in some areas, but said sectors such as healthcare and caregiving would remain heavily reliant on empathy, judgment and the human touch.

“We would still need to complement Singaporeans with immigrants. But the people we accept should be those who can contribute to Singapore,” he said. “We must also be mindful that we would have the capacity to accommodate them.”
Not only that, but a steady supply of willing immigrants could not be taken as a given, Tan added.
Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said earlier this year that Singapore would require a “carefully managed immigration flow” to augment its low birth rate, but stressed that supporting Singaporean families remained the government’s priority.
Singapore granted 25,000 new citizenships in 2025; that figure is expected to range between 25,000 and 30,000 annually over the next five years.
Not enough joy?
The city state’s around-the-clock work culture, often at the expense of work-life balance, was a further disincentive to starting a family, Tan said.
“As it is, raising children these days with dual-career parents does involve much juggling of time, even with the help of domestic workers and grandparents,” he said.
Simply creating a family-friendly environment may not be enough, according to Tan, who advised anxious would-be parents to consider seeing a genetic counsellor to understand and minimise health risks for their future children before conception.
“My view is that we need to emphasise the joy and privilege of having children. Having children is about the privilege of being able to experience a loving relationship, which money cannot buy.”

Biology also plays its part. Dr Huang Zhongwei, a consultant in reproductive endocrinology and fertility at Singapore’s National University Hospital, told This Week in Asia that roughly 15 per cent of Singaporean couples struggled to conceive for medical reasons in 2023, the latest year for which records were available.
Fertility tends to peak in the early twenties and decline sharply after 35, according to Huang, who is also deputy director of the National University of Singapore’s Bia-Echo Asia Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality.
“With the mean age at first birth rising to the mid-thirties in East Asia and Singapore, many couples are entering a period of reduced fertility by the time they begin trying to conceive,” he said.
Many couples are entering a period of reduced fertility by the time they begin trying to conceive
Dr Huang Zhongwei, reproductive health expert
More research was needed to confirm the influence that lifestyle factors such as smoking, intense exercise or poor sleep had on fertility, Huang said, enabling clinicians and policymakers to design better interventions before fertility had already begun to fade.
While subsidies and grants for IVF and other conception procedures could help, Huang stressed that education was equally important, as he said many young adults were unaware of just how quickly fertility declined with age.
“There needs to be greater investment into research on reproductive ageing. Advancing our understanding of how to extend reproductive health would not just benefit the current population but also future generations.”
‘No magic bullet’
The entire premise of “fixing” fertility rates may be flawed, according to Vignehsa, who argues that achieving replacement-level fertility is an unrealistic benchmark by international standards anyway.
The better measure was whether policy slowed demographic decline, helped people have the family size they actually wanted and “buys society time to adapt” its economy, healthcare and housing to a smaller future, she said.
“It captures why governments continue investing in family policy even when they know there is no magic bullet.”
Clare and her husband still want children and do not take for granted that parenthood will happen as soon as they are ready.
After hearing friends’ accounts of having to rely on in vitro fertilisation, the couple paid S$300 (US$230) at a public hospital for a fertility test involving blood tests, ultrasound and semen analysis.

Calling the results “suboptimal”, Clare said: “It made me a bit worried, but still balancing it against the demands of my current job, especially night shifts, makes it difficult to reconcile trying for kids now anyway.”
The results had not altered their timeline, she added, but they had prepared them to manage their expectations and consider alternatives like IVF over natural conception.
It is the emotional weight Vignehsa described, more than economic or practical factors, that troubles Clare most.
She raised the possibility of having a neurodiverse child and watching it suffer, or, even with a healthy child, bearing the pressure of responsibility for its upbringing and life outcomes.
“That’s a lot of emotional pressure, and I don’t see any added benefit going through that for now,” she said.
“Despite all of the factors that make Singapore a good place to raise a family, I think the decision to have children is still a very deeply personal one, and it really comes down to whether people feel like they’re able to commit to a lifelong responsibility.”
*Name changed at interviewee’s request


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Singapore

Is super-ageing Singapore headed for population decline?

Illustration: Huy Truong

A mother and her child stand next to the Rain Vortex display at Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport. Photo: AFP

A worker paints an apartment building in Singapore last month. Housing is among the costs the city state wants to make more manageable for prospective parents. Photo: AFP

Same-sex parents kiss their son during the Pink Dot SG pride event in Singapore on June 27. Photo: EPA

Migrant workers on a construction site in Singapore. The city’s growth model historically combined labour force expansion with productivity improvements. Photo: AFP

A carer walks with an elderly woman through a park in Singapore. Sectors such as healthcare and caregiving will still require the human touch, observers say. Photo: AFP

A child poses for photos at a Chinese New Year market in Singapore in 2024. Photo: Xinhua

A woman carrying her baby shops at a Hari Raya bazaar in Singapore. Photo: Reuters

What does Singapore lose when the wrecking ball swings?

Murals adorn a wall at 195 Pearl’s Hill Terrace in Singapore. Photo: Kolette Lim

Singapore’s skyline is seen in the background as people paddleboard in the sea off East Coast Park. Photo: AFP

People relax at a beach at East Coast Park in Singapore. Photo: AFP

People walk and cycle past Jumbo seafood restaurant in Singapore’s East Coast Park. Photo: Kolette Lim

Horse racing at Singapore Turf Club, as known as Kranji Racecourse, in 2019. Photo: Kenneth Chan

Olivia Fones, director of arts studio Arterly Obsessed at 195 Pearl’s Hill Terrace. Photo: Kolette Lim

Gillman Barracks, a leafy compound of low, white colonial-era buildings that once housed British Army regiments, now shelters a dozen art galleries, cafes and bars. Photo: Handout

‘Super-aged’ Singapore’s secret to growing old well? Stay busy

Elderly citizens use sewing machines at the Yong-en Active Hub in Singapore. Photo: Kolette Lim

Elderly citizens gather at the Yong-en Active Hub to take part in art, language and exercise classes, or socialise with others over board games like Rummikub. Photo: Kolette Lim

Agnes Chen, a 74-year-old retiree and carer for her elderly sister-in-law, visits the Yong-en Active Hub at least once a week to socialise and learn new skills. Photo: Kolette Lim

Elderly citizens interact with a therapy miniature horse at an active ageing centre in Singapore last year. Photo: AFP

A carer walks with an eldery woman at a park in Singapore. Photo: AFP

Elderly women use sewing machines at the Yong-en Active Hub in Singapore. Photo: Kolette Lim

Ageing Southeast Asia breaks death taboos to plan for the final bill

A visitor tries out a coffin at Death Fest in Nonthaburi, Thailand. Photo: Aidan Jones

Elderly residents watch a lion dance performance in Singapore in 2024. The city state officially became a “super-aged” society this year. Photo: AFP

Elderly people take a walk in Tokyo. Nearly a third of Japan’s population is now aged 65 or over. Photo: Xinhua

Residents receive rehabilitation treatment at an elderly care home in Gyeonggi province, South Korea, last year. Photo: Korea Times

Visitors pose near a coffin at Death Fest in Nonthaburi, Thailand. Photo: Aidan Jones

A visitor tries out a coffin at Death Fest in Nonthaburi, Thailand. Photo: AP

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With babies in short supply and its birth rate tanking, the city state is weighing a future of robots and immigrants


With babies in short supply and its birth rate tanking, the city state is weighing a future of robots and immigrants.


Is super-ageing Singapore headed for population decline?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}With babies in short supply and its birth rate tanking, the city state is weighing a future of robots and immigrants

With babies in short supply and its birth rate tanking, the city state is weighing a future of robots and immigrants