Singapore Survey Finds Many Residents Choose Not to Have Children Because Work Leaves No Time

A new survey in Singapore points to a difficult finding ahead of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong's National Day Rally speech on Sunday, where he is expected to announce measures easing the strain on families. A substantial share of residents say they do not want children at all, and the reason they give is capacity rather than cost, according to the South China Morning Post. Singapore's fertility rate remains among the lowest in the world. Governments across East Asia have spent large sums on birth subsidies with limited measurable effect, which suggests the binding constraint is time and housing rather than a one-time payment.

The Financial Times argues that in Western economies the single-earner household did not end because of a change in values but because wages for men without university degrees stopped supporting a family on their own. Two incomes became necessary, then normal, and young non-graduate men now face specific setbacks in the labor market that follow from that shift.

Both accounts describe the same economic fact from different angles. When housing and services absorb a rising share of two incomes, family formation becomes a residual rather than a plan. That is a monetary story as much as a social one. Decades of credit expansion have raised the price of the assets a household needs before it can start, principally housing, faster than the wages it uses to buy them. Subsidy programs address the flow. The constraint sits in the asset price.