It is very bad news that the resident total fertility rate (TFR) in Singapore seems to have dropped below one for the first time in the Republic’s history. The TFR, which refers to the average number of babies each woman would give birth to during her reproductive years, is an indicator of a fundamental requirement of social life: a society’s ability to reproduce itself over time. Unfortunately, preliminary estimates indicate a resident TFR of 0.97 in 2023, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah told Parliament on Feb 28. That dismal figure places Singapore’s fertility rate at well below the replacement rate of 2.1 – the level of fertility at which the population replaces itself from one generation to the next. These tidings are ominous. A TFR of 0.97 places Singapore among countries with the lowest birth rates globally, with South Korea topping the list with a TFR of 0.72 in 2023.

Singapore has in place a range of coordinated measures to support marriage and parenthood, but it is no exception to trends observable elsewhere. In one analysis, the birth rate in the United States has been falling since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, and dropped almost 23 per cent between 2007 and 2022. The average American woman today bears about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950. In Italy, 12 people die for every seven babies born. Many East Asian societies, too, are a part of the trajectory of population decline occurring even in spite of generous pro-natalist policies.