More singles, late marriages 'worrying trends'
http://hojinx.blogspot.com/
Perhaps many of you have heard this before, but I am going to talk about it again today. And the topic is late marriages, and Singapore’s aging population.
Despite of the many perks the government actually offers to people who give birth to children, it does not seem to be particularly effective, as we monitor the birth rate and various other statistics, as shown in the newspaper article.
From the article, we can see that the proportion of singles over the ages of 30 to 39 have increased by quite a significant amount over the course of just 15 years. Also, the median age of marriage, median age at which Singaporean women give birth, and the proportion of married but childless Singaporean women aged 40-49 have all increased. With the above-stated trends, it is only natural that the average number of children born to married Singaporean women has decreased.
I agree with sociologist Paulin Tay-Straughan’s suggestion, that networking would benefit more than the current matchmaking approach. That is to say, we do not work towards getting two people together. Instead, we give everyone a more comfortable environment that supports getting life-partners, so that they will be more inclined towards finding the one for them.
Currently, I believe the biggest problem that couples face in deciding whether to have babies or not is actually the amount of money it takes raise a child. It actually takes a lot of money to raise a child, all the way till they are old enough to earn money on their own. People nowadays are relatively more responsible than the past. Before having sex, they would think about whether they can afford to raise a child. If not, they would do whatever is required to reduce the chances of pregnancy. It is not like the past, where the general public hardly considered the consequences of their actions. With that, people generally do not wish to have babies till they are certain that they are capable of raising a child. Even so, it is unlikely there would be more than one child.
An alternative solution would be to promote social interaction between the people, and allow the working population more holidays so that they can get out more to get to know more people. This would very likely be beneficial towards raising the number of marriages.
However, it is not that ineffective, as My Wong also stated, that recent incentives – which include a parenthood package of $575 million in 2005 – had made an impact to arrest the decline of the fertility rate, with more babies being born in 2005 than the year before.
I believe that the monetary incentive would also play a great role in increasing the birth rate of Singapore. In this ever-changing world, the importance of money has never been greater. You don’t have anything if you don’t have money. Therefore, I believe monetary incentives would reap good results.
Perhaps many of you have heard this before, but I am going to talk about it again today. And the topic is late marriages, and Singapore’s aging population.
Despite of the many perks the government actually offers to people who give birth to children, it does not seem to be particularly effective, as we monitor the birth rate and various other statistics, as shown in the newspaper article.
From the article, we can see that the proportion of singles over the ages of 30 to 39 have increased by quite a significant amount over the course of just 15 years. Also, the median age of marriage, median age at which Singaporean women give birth, and the proportion of married but childless Singaporean women aged 40-49 have all increased. With the above-stated trends, it is only natural that the average number of children born to married Singaporean women has decreased.
I agree with sociologist Paulin Tay-Straughan’s suggestion, that networking would benefit more than the current matchmaking approach. That is to say, we do not work towards getting two people together. Instead, we give everyone a more comfortable environment that supports getting life-partners, so that they will be more inclined towards finding the one for them.
Currently, I believe the biggest problem that couples face in deciding whether to have babies or not is actually the amount of money it takes raise a child. It actually takes a lot of money to raise a child, all the way till they are old enough to earn money on their own. People nowadays are relatively more responsible than the past. Before having sex, they would think about whether they can afford to raise a child. If not, they would do whatever is required to reduce the chances of pregnancy. It is not like the past, where the general public hardly considered the consequences of their actions. With that, people generally do not wish to have babies till they are certain that they are capable of raising a child. Even so, it is unlikely there would be more than one child.
An alternative solution would be to promote social interaction between the people, and allow the working population more holidays so that they can get out more to get to know more people. This would very likely be beneficial towards raising the number of marriages.
However, it is not that ineffective, as My Wong also stated, that recent incentives – which include a parenthood package of $575 million in 2005 – had made an impact to arrest the decline of the fertility rate, with more babies being born in 2005 than the year before.
I believe that the monetary incentive would also play a great role in increasing the birth rate of Singapore. In this ever-changing world, the importance of money has never been greater. You don’t have anything if you don’t have money. Therefore, I believe monetary incentives would reap good results.
posted by Kenn at 9:36 AM
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