Pushing for babies: Singapore fights fertility decline

When Clara Chng graduated from university, the Singapore government's matchmaking agency offered her a two-year free trial to find a husband.

Young, well-educated, and ethnic Chinese, Chng was a prime candidate for the Orwellian-sounding Social Development Unit, or SDU, set up in 1984 to help graduates find suitable spouses and reverse an alarming slump in city-state's fertility rate.

"I didn't meet anyone through work, and you never know if someone is married or single, and if he is hiding something from you," said Chng, 37. "But at SDU, the men are serious, they are not just fishing around."

Even so, she found the experience "stressful." As she approached 30, her counselor urged her to hurry up because her chances of finding a husband would soon fade.

Some might find such government involvement in their marital prospects intrusive, but Singapore's ruling People's Action Party has often used financial incentives and other methods to influence its citizens' behavior - from who they marry and when, to how many children they have, and where they live.

For example, about 84 percent of Singaporeans live in apartments built by the government's public housing agency, which sells its properties according to strict race quotas.

The quotas -reflecting the overall population mix of 76 percent Chinese, 14 percent Malay, 9 percent Indian, and 1 percent Eurasian - are meant to prevent ghettos.

It was only recently that the agency relaxed its rules, in the face of a housing glut and complaints from singles, to allow unmarried Singaporeans to buy subsidized public housing.

EUGENICS

But it's the ruling PAP's policies on marriage and babies, with their whiff of eugenics, that have proved most controversial.

Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a firm believer in the inheritance of intelligence, sparked a furor in the early 1980s when he urged women graduates to marry graduate men and have more babies to boost Singapore's talent pool.

"Our brightest women were not marrying and would not be represented in the next generation. The implications were grave," Lee said in his memoirs.

With just 4.4 million people, Singapore cannot afford to see its population shrink as that could affect its labor market and talent pool, as well as the more sensitive issue of racial mix.

Like many developed countries, Singapore saw its birth rate decline as contraception and abortion became widely available, as more women entered the workforce, and following the success of an earlier PAP campaign that urged parents, particularly those with low incomes, to "Stop at Two."

The fertility rate, which was as high as six in the late 1950s, fell to 1.83 in 1990, and as low as 1.24 in 2004.