Rising share of women staying single is behind S'pore's great baby drought

While the fertility rate of married women has risen, not enough women are getting married

- Theresa Tan

The growing share of women remaining single is one major reason for Singapore's longstanding baby drought, with the resident total fertility rate (TFR) falling to below 1 in 2023 for the first time in Singapore's history.

A Department of Statistics (DOS) analysis of the factors behind the falling TFR found that the drop in the TFR between 2005 and 2023 was due to a decline in the proportion of married women, which offset slight increases in the fertility rate of married women.

The analysis, published in the DOS newsletter in May, comes after Singapore's resident TFR fell to 0.97 in 2023 - which is among the lowest in the world. The TFR refers to the average number of babies each woman would have during her reproductive years.

If more Singaporeans remain unwed, what this means is that Singapore's TFR is likely to continue to fall, said the academics who study population issues.

Professor Jean Yeung, director of social sciences at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research's Institute for Clinical Sciences and a professor at NUS' Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, said: "Since we will have an increasingly small number of women at a marriageable and child-bearing age, and births outside of wedlock are illegitimate in Singapore, the number of citizen births will likely continue to decline if the marriage rates keep declining." This is sobering news for Singapore, which has put in place an arsenal of measures to boost the birth rate in the past 20 over years.

This includes Baby Bonus cash gifts for newborns, more maternity and paternity leave, and extending Government co-funding for invitro fertilisation treatment for older women.

In its analysis, the DOS compared the TFR for two different periods due to the difference in the data trends observed, its spokesperson told The Sunday Times.