Lee Kuan Yew on Marriage, Education, and Fertility in Singapore

This document highlights a speech made by Singapore Prime Minister Lee on December 12 1986 concerning the demographic changes particularly marriage and birth patterns resulting from too rapid a change set off without circumspection. The 1986 figures were projected. Births to the Chinese numbered 29000 in 1984 or 69% of the total. In 1986 this figure dropped to 27000 or less than 67% of all live births. Table 2 shows the numbers of births that would occur if the population was reproducing itself--a deficit of some 15000 births. Table 3 shows 2 previous Years of the Tiger 1962 and 1974. In each case the birthrate per thousand population declined from the previous year the Year of the Ox. In the Year of the Rabbit it continued to drop. In 1976 the Year of the Dragon the birthrate rose by 1.5 points. Lee notes that large numbers of the educated women are not getting married because of the old cultural biases of men for wives who are seen to be controllable. In 1982 65% of male graduates married nongraduates. The birthrate between the Malays and the Chinese and the Indians is so different because the educational levels achieved also are different. There are also religious cultural and other differences. This state of affairs could have been avoided by not introducing changes where the impact is on interpersonal and more important interfamilial relationships. Singapore sent a team to Japan to study what they did whether they faced this problem because their culture is similar--Chinese-based Confucianist culture of male dominance. The answer: they never allowed the problem to develop. Singapore lacked the wisdom to know that one can change the education pattern and the employment pattern but if one cannot change the cultural values of what makes a good spouse then there is dislocation. This pattern must be shifted and quickly or there will be disastrous consequences in a decade

Demographic economics · Economics · Fertility · Geography · Political science · Population · Sociology · Demography · Gender Studies · Islamic Finance and Banking Studies · Marriage and Family Dynamics · Socioeconomic Development in Asia

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