SINGAPORE – A new study has found that Singaporeans prefer having one child to not having any.

However, they do not prefer having two or more children – over just one child – if other areas of family life they value are not fulfilled, said Professor Jean Yeung, the study’s principal investigator for Singapore, which was one of eight countries involved in the study.

More than 22,000 people in eight countries were polled online about their family ideals in an era of unprecedented fertility decline in developed countries.

The countries are Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Norway, the United States and urban China, which refers to Chinese cities. Some 3,500 people in Singapore, including both married people and singles, were interviewed from December 2021 to February 2022.

Singaporeans’ preference for one child is similar to how respondents across the other seven countries felt, said Prof Yeung, the director of social sciences at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research’s Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences.

This preference is surprising, as past research has shown that there is a two-child norm in Singapore, she said. Her co-principal investigator in Singapore is Dr Senhu Wang, an assistant professor in the National University of Singapore (NUS) sociology department. Ten researchers from various countries were involved in the study.

Prof Yeung, who is also a professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, said: “This finding suggests that the previous method of asking people only the question ‘What is your ideal number of children?’ is flawed. It overestimates the actual number of children people want.”

The study comes as preliminary data showed that Singapore’s resident total fertility rate (TFR) fell below 1.0 for the first time in 2023 to 0.97, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah said on Feb 28.

The TFR refers to the average number of babies each woman would have during her reproductive years, and the 0.97 figure places Singapore among countries with the lowest TFR globally.

The study had asked respondents, when thinking about the number of children they want, to consider factors across 10 areas, such as family income, work-life balance, communication with family members and expectations of their children’s educational attainment.

In the study, which was published at the end of January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, respondents were asked to evaluate scenarios describing families with varying characteristics across the 10 areas.

They were asked to rate each scenario on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the number they agree with most, on what they see as a family they would like to have.

Prof Yeung said this methodology has led to more realistic answers from respondents on their ideal family size, as people make trade-offs when deciding on the number of children they want and other aspects of family life they value.

The study found that respondents in the eight countries, including Singapore, have similar family ideals. These ideals include:

• Good communication between immediate family members, that the family is respected in the community, and mutual support between partners as they pursue their professional and personal goals, were among the top attributes valued by respondents. 

• An above-average family income is more desirable than an average or below-average family income.

However, respondents in Singapore differed from the other countries in three areas.

• Singaporeans do not place as much emphasis on egalitarian gender relationships in a marriage as people in other countries, especially Spain and Norway. 

Prof Yeung said that Singaporeans seem to think that women who work and do most of the domestic duties at home, such as childcare and housework, are not any worse off than if both husband and wife share the domestic duties equally when both are in the workforce.

• Singaporeans see cohabitation as less ideal than respondents in European countries and the United States.

• When it comes to a child’s education, Singaporeans perceive having a post-graduate education as more ideal than having just a bachelor’s degree, compared with respondents in the other countries, except for China and Norway.

Prof Yeung said the eight countries studied have high incomes and low fertility rates, but they are different in cultural values and welfare systems. 

Among the eight, Singapore has the second-lowest TFR after South Korea’s 0.72 in 2023. The United States has the highest TFR of 1.78 in 2023, said Prof Yeung.

While the study did not ask respondents why they see having only one child as ideal, Prof Yeung said the difficulties of juggling work and raising children, and the high cost of raising children are among possible reasons.

She said: “The emphasis is on the quality of family relationships, living standards, and the quality – not quantity – of children.”

Commenting on the study’s findings, Dr Tan Poh Lin, senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, said that a shift away from the two-child norm in Singapore towards smaller family sizes would certainly dent efforts to push its total fertility rate upwards.

Dr Tan, who is not involved in the study, added: “To promote having a second or third child, families need more assurance that having siblings doesn’t disadvantage existing children in terms of parental time and opportunities.”