PSP's Stephanie Tan calls for structural overhaul to address Singapore's record-low fertility rate

Progress Singapore Party (PSP) Central Executive Committee (CEC) member and former General Election 2025 candidate Stephanie Tan has urged the Singapore government to pursue bold, society-wide structural reform to address the country's worsening fertility crisis, arguing that one-off financial incentives are insufficient to reverse a decline she described as both urgent and existential.

Tan made the remarks in a social media post published on 28 February 2026, days after the government confirmed that Singapore's resident total fertility rate (TFR) had fallen to a historic low of 0.87 in 2025, down sharply from 0.97 in 2024.

Approximately 27,500 resident births were recorded last year — an 11 per cent decline from 2024 and the lowest figure in the country's recorded history.

Tan draws on personal experience

Writing from her own experience as a working mother, Tan said she married at 26 and had her first child at nearly 28. When her child turned one, she sought to transition to a part-time role to better balance her professional and parenting responsibilities, only to be told the quota for such positions was full.

Faced with no middle ground, she was effectively forced to choose between remaining in a demanding full-time role or leaving the workforce entirely to become a stay-home parent.

Tan argued this was far from an isolated experience. "The reality is that organisational quotas, unsympathetic bosses, and concerns about career progression or job security can force women — and some men — into stark choices," she wrote.

She contended that most young women in Singapore now enter the workforce immediately after graduation, and that those who choose to start a family quickly find themselves confronted with the relentless competing demands of career and parenthood. She described sustaining both simultaneously as "one of the hardest things to do."

Tan said it was difficult to view having children as a blessing when the joys of parenting were consistently overshadowed by daily struggles. She suggested this reality helps explain why many couples who have a first child choose not to have a second or third.

Structural reform, not cash incentives

Tan argued that reversing Singapore's TFR decline requires a holistic approach extending well beyond one-off cash payments or enhanced baby bonuses.

Policies must address life in totality, she said, including the cost of living, housing affordability, work-life balance, the availability and affordability of caregiving, and pressures created by the education system.

Without tackling these structural issues, she said, the "marriage and parenthood reset" raised by Minister Indranee Rajah would remain elusive. Tan stated that meaningful reform requires both time and genuine political will.

Her remarks came as Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Gan Kim Yong, speaking during a budget debate for the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on 26 February 2026, described the pace of the decline as unprecedented and characterised the overall trend as a matter of grave concern for the nation's demographic structure.

DPM Gan noted that marriage rates had also fallen alongside birth rates, with couples who do marry increasingly opting for fewer children or choosing to remain childless.

In 2025, 24,687 marriages were registered — a 6.2 per cent decline from 2024 and the lowest figure since the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted civil proceedings in 2020.

Caregiving as a central concern

On caregiving, Tan noted that the high cost of living means most couples of childbearing age depend on dual incomes, leaving them to delegate childcare to grandparents, foreign domestic workers, or formal infant and student care services.

She highlighted the PSP's previously proposed monthly allowance of S$1,250 for parents or grandparents serving as full-time caregivers of Singaporean children from birth to age seven.

Tan also called for paid childcare leave to be scaled according to the number of children in a household, rather than remaining capped at six days per year regardless of family size.

She said frequent childhood illness is a significant and underacknowledged stressor for working parents, and that the current leave structure fails larger families.

This view found some resonance in Parliament, where Minister Indranee Rajah acknowledged that many Members and members of the public had similarly called for more childcare leave. She said the government would study the suggestions carefully, while bearing in mind the needs of employers still adjusting to recent parental leave enhancements.

Fertility treatment and employer support

Addressing biological realities, Tan noted that fertility declines with age and that some couples who wish to have children struggle to conceive.

She called for greater government support for egg-freezing and in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures, referencing the PSP's earlier parliamentary proposal for subsidies at public hospitals and the use of MediSave funds for egg-freezing.

Tan also suggested that employers could play a meaningful role by incorporating fertility benefits into employee healthcare packages.

The government similarly acknowledged fertility as an area requiring greater attention. Minister Indranee noted in Parliament that the median age of mothers at first birth in Singapore was approximately 32 years in 2024, and that roughly one in six people globally experience infertility.

She said the government would work with agencies to raise awareness of fertility health, review financial and non-financial support available to couples, and improve workplace support for those undergoing fertility treatments.

Government's four-pronged response

Minister Indranee, who spoke in Parliament on 26 February 2026, announced that she will chair a new government Workgroup comprising relevant agencies to examine the underlying drivers of declining marriage and family formation rates.

The Workgroup will engage the public, businesses, and the people sector, with further details to be announced in due course.

The initiative forms part of what she described as a "Marriage and Parenthood Reset" — a reset she said must extend beyond government policy to encompass how workplaces, communities, and society at large view and support families.

The Workgroup will pursue a four-pronged approach: enhancing existing government support for marriage and parenthood; cultivating more positive societal mindsets about starting a family; fostering family-friendly workplace cultures; and engaging the whole of society in the effort.

Minister Indranee also offered a comparative global perspective, noting that declining fertility is a worldwide phenomenon and that major cities consistently record lower TFRs than their national averages.

In 2024, Tokyo recorded a TFR of 0.96 against Japan's national figure of 1.15, while Hong Kong recorded 0.84 and Shanghai fell below 0.80 against China's national figure of approximately 1.00. 

She suggested Singapore's TFR may be more meaningfully compared against other global cities than against other nations as a whole.

Shared urgency, different emphases

Both Tan and Minister Indranee framed Singapore's TFR crisis as an existential challenge requiring action well beyond government policy.

However, while Minister Indranee's remarks placed considerable weight on mindset change — noting that those without children often view parenthood through the lens of what they might lose rather than what they might gain — Tan's post centred on the structural and economic barriers that she said continue to constrain real choices for working parents.

Tan concluded by calling on the government to be bold enough to introduce the measures necessary for what she described as a genuine "society-wide reset," cautioning that incremental adjustments are unlikely to be sufficient given the speed and depth of the current decline.