Singapore’s February 2023 in six figures: 1,102 days, 1.05, 33.2%, 5.5%, 0.437, and $9.6 billion
“I’m not good enough for Singapore, sorry I’m not a talent. I just want to stay at home and spend the rest of my life at home. I want to quit everything. I'm so exhausted.”
We’re excited to share our new podcast mini-series, “The Community”, but first, here are six figures summarising Singapore’s social service news in February 2023.
#01: The six figures: 1,102 days, 1.05, 33.2%, 5.5%, 0.437, and $9.6 billion
1,102 days
1,102 days after Singapore stepped up its Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) framework to Orange on February 7, 2020, the country stepped down to DORSCON Green on February 13, 2023 (we moved from Orange to Yellow ten months ago). Long-term challenges persist, and last year I highlighted four trends in a podcast episode: “First, the harm to children, adolescents, and youths; second, compounded socio-economic inequality (and not just poverty and income inequality); third, social isolation; and fourth, ambiguous loss and unresolved grief.”
1.05
Extending a downward trend, Singapore’s 2022 total fertility rate (TFR), which has been under 1.2 since 2017, was 1.05, exactly half the replacement rate of 2.1. It is a common demographic trend among economically developed East Asian countries – for instance, at 0.78, South Korea has the world’s lowest 2022 TFR – reflecting growing concerns over costs of living and increasingly pessimistic life outlooks despite substantial childcare subsidies and parenting support from the government.
33.2%
Part of the rising costs in Singapore? Rents. From January 2022 to January 2023, overall rents increased by 33.2 per cent, which is hurting not just Singaporeans but also those who have made the country their home. CNA shared the sad reflection of a Chinese publishing executive who is leaving before her lease ends:
“I’m not good enough for Singapore, sorry I’m not a talent. I just want to stay at home and spend the rest of my life at home. I want to quit everything. I'm so exhausted.”
5.5%
And it’s not just rents. Singapore’s core inflation – excluding private transportation and accommodation costs – rose 5.5 per cent, which is the highest since November 2008.
0.437
However, in 2022, we reported an increase in median household income (including after inflation adjustments) and a year-on-year decrease in income inequality. Before government transfers and taxes, the Gini coefficient fell from 0.444 to 0.437, and from 0.385 to 0.378 after adjustments. Discussions of social mobility and meritocracy featured prominently during the parliamentary debate on the 2023 Budget statement, with opposition leader Pritam Singh warning of the perceptions of “two Singapores”, pitting the “high earners and the rich” against the “lower and middle-classes”.
$9.6 billion
This year’s Budget statement sought to address some of these problems, including enhancements to the baby bonus (to address our falling TFR), increases in property stamp duties (to curb rising rents and property prices), and support for low-income families (to manage socio-economic inequality). Overall, the government increased the Assurance Package to $9.6 billion (from $6.6 billion) to assuage persistent concerns over the rising cost of living.
Philanthropic organisation The Majurity Trust also summarised the Budget’s implications for those in the social service sector, highlighting: (1) Cost-of-living support; (2) Help for low-income families; (3) Charity support; (4) Individual giving and corporate volunteerism; as well as (5) Revised tax incentives for family office regional giving.
Separately, two other news articles caught my eye:
Salary raises: For the first time since 2018, salaries of workers in the social service sector have been reviewed, with expected increases between 4 and 15 per cent.
An incubator charity model for children and youth programmes: New charity Suncare SG offers an interesting proposition of using research and evaluation to pilot programmes, before handing effective ones to other organisations to continue and scale.
And finally, a bugbear for the month. I advocate for the retirement of the coordination trope vis-à-vis Singaporean social problems and social service agencies. Coordination is obviously important, but headlines such as “Coordination between social service agencies can improve digital inclusion for seniors” do little to interrogate the challenges of coordination and how better coordination should look like.
#02: New podcast mini-series, “The Community” with AMKFSC Community Services
This month, we launched our new podcast mini-series with AMKFSC Community Services, focused on community work and community development in Singapore. You'll hear from everyday residents, community workers, social work practitioners and other community members, as we dive deep into this common yet often overlooked term: “community”.
You can now listen to the teaser episode introducing the mini-series as well as two of the four episodes:
What makes a community? “Before exploring the details of community work and community development, we ought to understand: What makes a community? More fundamentally, what is a community? Or the community?”
Community development in social work practice “What do community work and community development look like in practice? More specifically, what do they look like in social work practice?”
The socialservice.sg podcast is hosted on Anchor and is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
#03: Global news roundup
The United States (US) secretary of state cancelled a long-planned trip to Beijing after the detection of a high-altitude Chinese spy surveillance balloon over the US. China has maintained that it was a weather balloon blown off course. Later, the balloon was shot down with a single missile. Later, China also confirmed it operated a balloon detected over Latin America, relying on the same explanation that it was an unmanned airship for research purposes which had been blown off course.
In Ukraine, president Joe Biden paid a surprise visit to Kyiv ahead of the first anniversary of Russia's invasion, which has since become Europe's largest land war since the Second World War. Relatedly, internal prosecutors reported that president Vladimir Putin had approved a decision to supply long-range missiles to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, leading to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.
Also read about the following in this month’s roundup:
UK political developments, including Scotland and Northern Ireland;
Deadly Turkish and Syrian earthquakes, alongside other natural and man-made disasters; as well as
West Bank violence and simmering global discontent.