Dwindling Population Growth in Singapore

The birth rate is one of the most basic and important measures in demography and it affects public policy and budgeting for education and health systems , and can have major impacts on the well-being of a country's population .

During our CID lesson , we learnt that China is enforcing one child policy due to the fact that too many children were being born every year . However , Singapore has a completely different situation . Singapore has one of the lowest birthrate in the world depite being one of the richest countries . Right now the total fertility rate in Singapore is at about 1.2 and at times it has slipped down as far as 1.16 .

If the dwindling population growth continue to occur , it will results in population ageing which contribute a lot of problems for a society . This can adversely affect the quality of life for the young as an increased social and economic pressure in the sense that they have to increase output in order to support an infrastructure with costly and intensive care for the oldest among their population . A smaller population may also results in less competition for work and resouces . This may not be an advantage because the amount of work for each indivitual will increase and the work quality may also decrease as there is less competiotion thus less stress . 

In order to prevent these situation to occur in our future , we need to prepare for them now . The most common reason for couples that refuse to have children is because they felt that raising children uses up a lot of their energy and money . Singapore government can help by providing more support for health care and school fees for low income families . We can also do our part by behaving and listen to our parents to reduce their stress .

Therefore , I think that in order to maintain our society's balance , everyone must do their part to help each other and encourage more couples to have children when possible .