Singapore’s rapidly aging population outlook

Singaporeans could be attending more funerals than baby showers in about 10 years as deaths outnumber births. The country’s population will shrink without immigration, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Indranee Rajah warned in mid-September. She said the assessment was based on projections of Singapore’s birth rate, migration and life expectancy in the coming years.

This will have far-reaching consequences, including for the size of Singapore’s workforce and economic dynamism, demographic researchers say. They also note that it will impact caregiving and the social fabric.

In 2023, Singapore had 24,726 deaths, up 40% from 17,691 in 2014. In contrast, births to citizens fell over the same period, with 28,877 births in 2023, down 13% from 33,193 in 2014, a PMO spokesman told The Straits Times.

Professor Jean Yeung, director of social science at the Institute for Human Potential and Development, said that when a country’s birth rate declines over a long period of time, its population will age and the number of deaths will naturally exceed the number of births.

Singapore’s total fertility rate, which measures the average number of children each woman will have during her childbearing years, has been falling for the past 30 years. For the first time in history, it fell below 1, to 0.97 in 2023, compared to a normal rate of 2.1.

Over the past two decades, Singapore has introduced a series of measures to boost its birth rate. These include offering baby bonuses, more paid maternity and parental leave, and extending a government co-funding scheme for IVF treatment for older women.

Scholars interviewed were not surprised by the PMO’s forecast, saying that countries with low birth rates such as China, Japan and Italy have seen more deaths than births.

For example, Japan’s population fell for the 15th consecutive year in 2023, with 730,000 births and 1.58 million deaths. China’s population also fell for the second consecutive year, with 11.1 million deaths and just 9.02 million births. These countries have tried to address their declining populations in a variety of ways, including introducing measures to boost birth rates, delaying retirement ages and increasing migration.