After 40 years of parenthood incentives Singapore's fertility rate is still falling

Boon Shang says if she decides to have children, she wants it to be for the right reasons.

"I don't want to have a child just because it's considered a life milestone," Ms Shang, a Singaporean who works as an accountant, said.

"I'd want to do it when I truly feel ready to welcome a child into the world and experience life and the world together with them."

She and her husband, Favian Heng, are not alone among Singapore couples who feel hesitant about becoming parents.

Singapore's fertility rate fell to a new record low in 2025 — prompting an alarmed government to warn that the country faces an "existential challenge".

The city-state's total fertility rate (TFR) for 2025 was 0.87 children per woman, a "significant drop" from 0.97 in 2024, its deputy Prime Minister, Gan Kim Yong, said in February.

Singapore, which has a population of 6 million, has spent more than 40 years trying to address plummeting fertility rates and an aging population.

Despite those policies, the fertility rate in Singapore fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2025.

If the total fertility rate were to remain unchanged at 0.87 children per woman, there would be only 44 children and 19 grandchildren for every 100 residents, Mr Gan said.

"Over time, it will be practically impossible to reverse the trend because we will have fewer and fewer women who can bear children," he said.

Growing up, Mr Heng wanted to have children, but after compulsory military service, university, establishing his career, marriage, and house-hunting, he is now weighing the "opportunity cost".

"Do I want to have children now, or do I want to enjoy my life a bit more now that I've started to settle down?" Mr Heng, a financial planner, said.

Why is the challenge 'existential'?

Singapore's temporary migrant workers and international students kept its overall population growing by 1.2 per cent in 2025.

The government will grant citizenship to up to 5,000 more people each year, bringing the total to 30,000.

It will also increase the number of permanent residencies permitted each year from 35,000 to 40,000. 

But Mr Gan said it was "critical" that Singapore "maintained a stable citizen core" of Singaporean-born people, which grew modestly over time, to keep its society and economy dynamic and vibrant.

Among experts, Tan Poh Lin, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said the declining fertility rate threatened the balance between a large "citizen core" and newer immigrants.

This balance is central to the Singapore government's long-term efforts to maintain the population's ethnic composition, build national identity and maintain social cohesion.

"Without the citizen core serving as the foundation for its distinctive sense of identity and nationhood, it risks being less rooted and becoming just another attractive destination for international migration," she said.

Julius Mok, a PhD candidate in Australia and Singapore policy studies at the University of Melbourne, said public declarations like Mr Gan's signalled that the government was taking the issue seriously and that the public should as well.

It also "softened the landing" for further policy changes that were needed, he said.

Mr Mok said Singapore's migration policy aimed to keep a balance between Singaporean Chinese, Malays, Indians and others.

He said the country also faced challenges fostering national identity among "new Singaporeans" who contributed economically but might not stay to defend Singapore if needed.

"And you can only do that by raising Singaporean Singaporeans, whether they be Singaporean Chinese, Singaporean Malays, people who have roots in Singapore, who grew up in Singapore."

Social engineering for parenthood

Singapore, well-known for its proactive management of population growth through policies targeting reproduction, initially discouraged citizens from having large families in the 1960s and 1970s.

But it backflipped in the 1980s when it realised the birth rate was declining and introduced policies to encourage marriage and reproduction.

Abortion and sterilisation regulations were tightened, and women wanting them were required to undergo counselling beforehand, while tax rebates of up to S$20,000 ($22,200), cash and housing incentives were developed that favoured families and heterosexual couples.

Under the baby bonus scheme introduced in 2001, the government matched parental contributions into savings accounts for children's health and education expenses.

It also began co-contributing up to 75 per cent of assisted reproduction costs in 2008, and embryo genetic testing in 2022.

Since 1964, Singapore's government has also attempted to incentivise couples to start families by increasing their access to new, publicly managed housing stock.

"Anecdotally, a lot of Singaporeans I know will get married because they want to get a build-to-order apartment. Do they love the person? Ideally, but not always," Mr Mok said.

But Dr Tan said the most noteworthy of the government's efforts had been its ramping up of childcare availability, affordability and quality.

The government increased the number of preschool places to more than 200,000, subsidised childcare costs, capped monthly fees, and lowered the cost of employing a domestic worker, enabling mothers to work.

"There has been a concerted effort to support and train early educators to help reassure parents that their children are in good hands while they are at work," Dr Tan said.

Have the incentives failed?

Despite the suite of incentives to boost parenthood, Singapore's fertility rate remains well below 2.1 children per woman — about the minimum rate at which the population can "replace" itself.

Mr Mok said this suggested the incentives had not been sufficient to overcome the legacy of anti-natal attitudes once promoted in government policy.

"What the government has discovered and is now panicking about, quite rightly, is these [policies] are not working," he said.

Other experts, like Dr Tan, said declining fertility rates did not necessarily mean government policies had failed, as they may have prevented a steeper decline.

But she said deterrents to parenthood — particularly attitudes that prioritised investing in individual knowledge, skills and experience — were still too strong.

Other support was needed to "substantially offset" the monetary and time demands of child rearing, Dr Tan said.

A cultural shift

For some, the barriers to having children are more than financial.

Ms Shang said Singapore's 16 weeks of paid parental leave and financial support across different phases of a child's life, rather than lump-sum payments, would be meaningful.

But even without cost pressures, Mr Heng did not feel mentally ready for the time commitment and "loss of identity" that came with becoming a parent.

In the short term, Mr Heng said the government's parenthood incentives would boost those who already wanted children, but for others like him, a mindset shift was needed.

He said growing up in the Singaporean environment was very competitive, and young people were encouraged to prioritise their schoolwork and their careers.

"It's about climbing the social ladder, and then you ask yourself, did I really work so hard just so that I can get bumped down the ladder just because I have a child?"

When interviewing for a job, Ms Shang was also asked whether she planned to have children.

She said she answered the question honestly, but was worried that it could affect how employers perceived her and her chances of being hired if she wanted children one day.

Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, an associate professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore, said declining fertility rates reflected a structural shift in the population, with an increasingly greater concern about both the financial and non-financial costs of parenthood.

Women also still bear higher opportunity costs in their careers and at home, while societal acceptance for not being parents has grown, she said.

Dr Teerawichitchainan said people needed to consider family income, the trade-off between quality of life and quantity of children, tuition fees, and the emotional cost of raising children to overcome Singapore's hyper-competitive schooling environment.

"There's still a desire to have family, but they're inclined not to have two or more children."