Lee blames changed lifestyles for fewer births
Print Edition
Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew has denied his policies were to blame for the city’s low birth rate and said financial handouts for young couples would not solve the problem.
In his new book launched yesterday, Lee insisted that the reluctance of couples to have more children was the result of changed lifestyles and mindsets, which no amount of financial perks could alter.
Despite a slew of so-called “baby bonuses” to encourage couples to have children, Singapore’s total fertility rate last year stood at 1.20 children per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain the native-born population.
The former prime minister, who retired from politics in 2011, rejected as “absurd” suggestions that his “Stop At Two” children campaign in the 1970s played a part in the decline of current fertility rates.
Fearing that a population explosion would hit growth and overwhelm infrastructure, Lee’s government instituted the tough measures to persuade young couples to have only two children. The policy saw the government legalize abortion, encourage voluntary sterilization and introduce disincentives for larger families wanting to live in public housing.
Large monetary incentives would only have a “marginal effect” in correcting the low fertility rate, he added.
“I cannot solve the problem, and I have given up,” he wrote in his new book entitled “One Man’s View of the World.”
The declining fertility rate remains the biggest threat to Singapore’s survival, Lee said. He pointed to the example of Japan, which is on a “stroll into mediocrity” as the ranks of its elderly swell due to young couples not producing enough babies.
Lee, who will turn 90 next month, said in the book that he feels weaker by the day and wants a quick death.
“Some time back, I had an Advanced Medical Directive done which says that if I have to be fed by a tube, and it is unlikely that I would ever be able to recover and walk about, my doctors are to remove the tube and allow me to make a quick exit,” he wrote in the book.
He said that despite daily exercise and a disciplined lifestyle, “with every passing day I am physically less energetic and less active.”
“There is an end to everything and I want mine to come as quickly and painlessly as possible, not with me incapacitated, half in coma in bed and with a tube going into my nostrils and down to my stomach,” he said.
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