Commentary: Singapore’s record low fertility rate is not all gloom and doom - it’s an opportunity - CNA

Before pronouncing Singapore’s impending end, let’s re-examine whether a declining population will always result in economic catastrophe, says veteran newspaper editor Han Fook Kwang.

Singapore’s total fertility rate (TFR) last year plunged to a record low 0.87 in 2025. (Photo: iStock) New: You can now listen to articles. This audio is generated by an AI tool.

Han Fook Kwang 08 Mar 2026 06:00AM Bookmark Bookmark Share WhatsApp Telegram Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn Set CNA as your preferred source on Google Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results. Read a summary of this article on FAST. Get bite-sized news via a newcards interface. Give it a try. Click here to return to FAST Tap here to return to FAST FAST SINGAPORE: The news that Singapore’s total fertility rate (TFR) last year plunged to a record low 0.87 has triggered a wave of doom saying. Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong called it an existential issue and wondered whether, if the trend continues, the country would still be around in 50 years.

There are not many issues which threaten Singapore’s survival in such stark terms – water security and climate change being two other examples.

It is right therefore to highlight the urgency and importance of the fertility problem, even though it is by now a familiar one that Singapore has been grappling with for decades.

This is the oft-repeated doomsday scenario: A fertility rate of less than 2.1 means that the population is not reproducing itself. If nothing is done, the number of people here will start to decline at some point. With fewer people in the workforce, the economy will suffer because there will not be enough workers and less economic activity with fewer people buying and spending their money.

CNA Games Guess Word Crack the word, one row at a time Buzzword Create words using the given letters Mini Sudoku Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser Mini Crossword Small grid, big challenge Word Search Spot as many words as you can Show More Show Less As if this was not bad enough, there is worse: Because fewer babies are born every year, the proportion of young people in the country will decline relative to the total. An ever-larger proportion of older people will need to be supported by an ever-shrinking younger population, straining the country’s resources even further during a time of reduced economic growth.

Therefore, the utmost effort must be made to increase the birth rate and to supplement the numbers with increased immigration.

This has been the dominant thinking with every prime minister including Mr Lee Kuan Yew, but every one of them failed to make any headway on the issue, with the TFR declining from 1.82 in 1980 to 0.87 in 2025.

In fact, Mr Lee himself said he had given up solving it, in an interview for the book One Man’s View Of The World in 2012, which I worked on: “If I had to identify one issue that threatens Singapore’s survival, it would be this one. I cannot solve the problem and I have given up. I have given up the job to another generation of leaders. Hopefully, they or their successors will eventually find a way out.”

In the book, he also wrote that he did not think it could be solved by giving parents more financial incentives or government support.

He said that if he were still in charge, he would offer a baby bonus worth two years of the average wage of Singaporeans then (in 2012), not because it would work to raise the birth rate but to prove that even with such a generous incentive, it would not do much.

In today’s terms, this would amount to S$144,000 for every newborn. He believed that even with such a super-sized incentive, which is more than 10 times the baby bonus offered today, it would not work because the problem had to do with lifestyle and mindset changes.

Before pronouncing the country’s impending death, I think it is useful to re-examine the premises of the original narrative.

History is a good starting point. Does the past support the view that a declining population always results in economic catastrophe?

When fertility rates did fall off over a long period after World War II, the result was not economic decline but rapid growth and technological innovation. 

In other words, the exact opposite of what has been feared.

This is well-documented in the book The Journey Of Humanity: And The Keys To Human Progress by Professor Oded Galor, an Israeli-American economist at Brown University in the United States.

He argued that for long periods in human history when the world’s population was growing, economic growth followed. More hands meant more work, whether in farming or manufacturing.

The industrial revolution in Europe in the 18th century accelerated growth even more. But because of large population growths, living standards for individual workers did not improve much.

The more the economy grew, the more children were born to parents who wanted more hands to work. Income per capita hence did not increase much.

One might argue that today’s situation is very different because fertility rates have fallen below replacement levels in many counties.

It is a valid point and it might well be that we have reached the proverbial tipping point.

The truth though is that no one really knows because there has never ever been a period in the past like this.

For what it is worth, Oded is more optimistic about the future.

In the same essay he wrote: “...just as fears of societal collapse may be overdrawn, so too are concerns about a declining population hindering technological progress. The transformative potential of AI is poised to accelerate innovation, even amid a shrinking population. While declining fertility rates pose moral, philosophical and economic challenges, they also create profound opportunities to sustain productivity growth, elevate living standards globally, and reduce humanity’s collective adverse footprint on the planet.”

He may or may not be right but he is not the first to raise the possibility that technology, especially AI, could improve human productivity leading to economic vibrancy despite lower population levels.