the following is an excerpt from Sunday Monitor's 1984 National Day special article, '1966: Family planning the nation's priority':
In 1966, the government was ready to move in. People were better educated, television had been running for several years, a network of 40 maternity and child health clinic established. The big, impressive FPA building on Dunearn Road, was taken over, the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board set up. A TV blitz began.
The results were impressive. The Government set out to reach 180,000 or 60 per cent of all married women in the 15 – 44 age group. The aim was to reduce the birthrate from 32 to 20 per thousand. With a death rate of 5 per thousand, this would set an annual growth pattern of 1.5 per cent by 1970…
The targets were not met. Only 156,556 women were reached. The birthrate fell to 21.8 per thousand by 1969.
Failure was horrifying for those who had worked so hard. An intensive search for causes began. More plan were worked out…
Now the whole machinery of the state swung into operation. The new line: Stop at two. Anything more was "anti social," the newly appointed Health Minister, Mr Chua Sian Chin, declared in Parliament.
An impressive array of legislation was introduced to reward and punish. It was directed at the pocketbook.
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@ lionnoisy
Ok, let’s not talk about the past where we cannot turn back the clock and undo it. Let’s talk about the present. We still face severely low fertility rate. If you take 1987 as the time they realized the problem, they had worked on it for the past 25 years. What had they found and what conclusions had they drawn from their 25 years of experiment? Moving forward, what is their plan?
I didn’t and still don’t see any solution in sight. What I saw was a systematic replacement of locals with foreigners. Are they admitting that Singapore is too expensive and hence uneconomical to raise children? So the future of Singapore lies in bringing foreigners to replace Singaporeans. Not because these foreigners are better than Singaporeans but because it is cheaper for our country to import people than to re-produce our own people.
Those who failed to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat their mistakes.
hi kf,
re your comments
"stop at 2 is 1 policy that has triggered many of our mega-issues today."
There would be more mega problems if STOP at TWO were not implemented!
again, no one tell me what were the most optimum period about STOP at two,if u were LKY?
zero year, five or 10 years, instead of 20 to 25 years?
Before u give me the answer, do you do some calculations how SG would suffer or enjoy from your ideal policy?now u guys just tell me the demerits of STOP at TWO today. What would people suffer if this policy was not implemented?
hi Sg Lang, OMG! u blame PAP for low fertlity rate!
Today,some people is more keen taking care pets,
than taking care babies!SG young couples can afford housing etc to form a family. BUT they just dunt want baby.can PAP force them ? Today ,young people just blame and give thousand excuses not to have baby.
No- kid- couple just blame everyone, but not themselves.
There are too many couples put their babies on child or baby cares from 7 to 7 !They would depose baby on child care and go to eat breakfast !
In short, they just dunt want spend time with the kid.
They do not change diaper overnight!
May be the kid is a accidential product.
lionnoisy,
"no one tell me what were the most optimum period about the stop-at-2 policy, if you were LKY?"
did the govt keep an eye on the situation on their policies? only they have the data that one must have in order to decide to carry on or tweek the policies. & we all know unadulterated data is like national secret to this day.
its quite common for govt to defend their policies regardless, & its easier when info is not open to scrutiny.
young couples who can afford but do not want babies are due to opportunity costs. education in Sg is comparably more expensive than those in this region. & having a child makes one less competitive in employer's eyes, generally speaking. coupled with more intense competition in the job market by our govt & the increasing job insecurity & the never ending rising costs of living, its quite logical that low TRF results.
having kids isn't the same as having a pet, got any pet go to school from pre-school to post uni? go to school is alot of money, with unpredictable returns. maybe end up as taxi driver one day?
you dunno some for women, having kids = serve NS?
Stop at 2 was a wrong policy back than but now, more than 2 it can be wrong too.
boasting having the best team in Sg is wrong too, the Epic Failures is proof enough.
no matter which direction the S'pore Flyer spin also cannot save them, neither can the best fengshui. there is hope in voodoo economics! phantom workers & bosses from hell do exist, & sometimes grey areas that can be interpreted by people deemed qualified (self claimed) are very afraid of shedding more light on certain issues. i strongly believe the devil in the details!
=D
The severity of the FT problem is the resulted of this very short sighted and ignorant policy.
It was one of the many short cuts the PAP took and continue to behave like they have done a good job.
Today we do not even have proper nation. We have leaders out to grab as much as they can like tomorrow we would not be here.
The new FT policy is blamed on the people. First, it is the two-child policy that permanently damaged our population renewal. Second, they failed to achieve the sort of productivity commensurate with a first world nation by relying solely on low cost labour. Thirdly we have hardly any innovation as we hang for dear life on the coat tails of the US, India and even Koreans to keep up.
What a terrible shame!
I hope TOC would release my earlier 6-point reply to lionnoisy's 2 March 6-point posting so that the latter wouldn't keep everyone in a circle with his/her arguments. Oh, TOC back to broad moderation again, hor?
lionnoisy,
I have never said that we cannot implement a stop at 2 policy. The problem is your interpretation. I merely said, if policy makers are dead set that our future is doomed for generations without the policy, so be it. Implement it in full force till eternity. As history has borne out, the decision to execute with full force was wrong. It had irreversible effects in permanent changes to the lifestyles and attitudes of the people, that even a multi million dollar club hasn't been able to resolve for years. Of course, if they weren't dead set, then it's their onus to ensure something can be tweaked down the road, since they are making decisions that affect the entire population, and the stakes are high when they get it wrong..
Coupled with the relentless pursuit to fatten their coffers at the expense of the people, namely through HDB, policy makers kept harping on lifestyle and attitude changes of the people, without addressing their underlying blunder, You are still talking about SURFACE CHANGES why people don't want to have babies instead of addressing the irreversible effects. You need to get deeper if you want to engage the people in this forum.
Do you think LKY will admit his "stop at Two" was a "short sighted" mistake ?
It was probably implemented to "help reduce their headache" and to " help speedup things to show results"
All for "personal Glory".
Today..still the same arrogant style…personal glory !
Haaaaaaaa! These forums wuld hve been so "Dull" without "@AT" around.
Thanks "@AT", for being the "Dumbass" and our "Punching Bag".
Only "Fools" as "stupid" as you would continue staying here to be "Punched".
":Two is enough" is tempering with the law of nature and as such it is not a good policy. Notwithstanding given the uncertainty in the future econmics of Singapore at that time, such policy may be construed as a possible quick-fit measure. However another policy that encourages the graduate mothers to have more children to provide more supposedly leader quality and talents for the management strata is in effect trying to generate an inverted triangular population distribution which is highly unstable. The effects have now surfaced. Tempering with the nature especially in human for quckfit measure is dangerous for it could lead to all kind of problem than without the quickfit measures.
The population policy is perahps the greatest and most costly error made by the early generation of PAP leaders !