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Interesting article and I also notice this trend among people around me https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/why-some-women-choose-to-be-child-free SINGAPORE - Madam Shirlene Noordin is 52 this year, and she still gets asked when she will have children. The communications director, who has been married for a decade, used to find such questions intrusive, but they now just make her chuckle. When she was younger and answered that she preferred never to be a mother, friends and relatives often told her she would change her mind. Some even warned that she might regret her decision one day. Now, past her childbearing years, neither has happened. She and her husband continue to live a fulfilling child-free life. She is not alone. According to the latest population figures, there is a growing pool of married women in Singapore who do not have children. In 2020, 13.5 per cent of married women in their 40s did not have children - up from 9.3 per cent in 2010. This follows a similar pattern across all age bands, including those in their 30s and 50s and older. For some of these women, it is biology that has made the decision for them. But for the others, it is a choice driven by pragmatic, ideological or personal reasons. Since society still links womanhood to motherhood, many of them face pressure to procreate, and are often labelled selfish or even unnatural for not wanting children. It does not help that Singapore's total fertility rate has fallen to its lowest ever at 1.1 last year, after declining for the past decades. While married women who are childless by choice are still the exception, rather than the norm, an ongoing government review on women's issues has sought to understand why some couples have not jumped on the parenthood bandwagon.

Real income divide Moving into a new neighbourhood has highlighted class differences Published on Nov 6, 2011 By Chua Mui Hoong [email protected] I was at a Dempsey cafe with some friends when a stray comment got me thinking about Singapore, social class and lifestyle experiences. What do you do on weekends, I was asked. Nothing much, I replied. My favourite weekend morning activity is to have breakfast at a hawker centre and read the papers. Oh yes, he nodded. Just to soak in the atmosphere? I was puzzled by the comment. In the two seconds it took me to process why, the conversation had moved on. And then I realised why. I have lived in everything from an attap house to a landed property to a condominium, but I always returned to Housing Board flats. Hawker centres, coffee shops and the rhythm of HDB life represent my native habitat. It is places such as Dempsey I go to, to soak in the atmosphere. And even then, I avoid weekend evenings when the trendy turn out in droves, and go there on quiet weekdays. I moved to a HDB estate in the west five months ago. Since then, I've realised two things. One, I remain at heart an HDB kid. Two, I had become used to certain comforts of a middle-class life. I had assumed they were just common habits of an increasingly affluent Singapore, but living here has sensitised me to just how subtle but real, the gap is between the working class and the middle class. In the Bukit Timah condominium where I used to live, every other car was a BMW, an Audi or a Mercedes, with a few Lamborghinis and Porsches. This is the UMI - upper middle income - class. Many are millionaires. According to a Boston Consulting Group report in June, Singapore has the highest concentration of millionaire households in the world, with 16 per cent of all households boasting at least $1 million in assets under management. That's 170,000 households out of 1.13 million. In Bishan where I also used to live, the carparks even of HDB estates are full of Japanese sedans and big cars, with a sprinkling of European luxury cars. This is the solid middle class, the HDB burgher. In my current estate, every other vehicle is a van, pick-up or lorry of some kind. I glance at the registered addresses on the vehicle, and I know most of those driving these vehicles home are not the bosses. My guess is they are the delivery drivers, the maintenance technicians. This is working- class Singapore. For the average HDB working class family, life remains a struggle. I see it around me. HDB shops have bare cement floors and fewer wares. Children play unsupervised by adults. When I changed my curtains, I packed my old ones into a bag, affixed a label that said 'Fits Master Bedroom' and left it at the foot of my block. It was gone when I returned from breakfast. My categorisation of Singapore groups are, of course, generalisations based on anecdotal experiences. But anecdote can be the basis of insight. In middle-class Bishan, I enjoyed the convenience of HDB life with its coffee shops, but I also had easy access to the cafes, organic food stores and deluxe cafes I enjoyed. Here in the west, the merchandise and shop mix is different. I went shopping for Dryel. That's the dry-cleaning kit that comes with a zipped-up bag and sheets of chemical cleaners you can use in your dryer, so you can dry-clean your silk dresses at home. I used to have no problems finding it in my old neighbourhoods. In my new estate, I couldn't find it in a few supermarkets. I asked one sales staff and was greeted with a stare, a loud question and a shake of the head. If you think about it, it's not surprising. Not many HDB families have a clothes dryer, so why would they need Dryel? I gave up, and returned to my old haunt, the Cold Storage at Guthrie House, a tiny supermarket with an amazing knack of stocking things every household - okay, every UMI household - can need. There was Dryel. And nice bread. And nice pate to go with said bread. I came to see that there are not just two Singapore: the heartlanders and the rest. Among the heartlanders, there is the middle class and the working class. And, I am coming to realise, there is another sub-set of the UMI class. If the UMI is the top 20 per cent, the top 1 per cent would be the Ultra Rich. My totally subjective definition of this group is that they earn at least $2 million a year, live in Good Class Bungalow areas or penthouse condominium apartments, and fly First or Business Class on holiday. These folks apologise for their homes being 'only 5,000 sq ft' - as one interviewee once told me. Their numbers will grow, if Singapore continues to do well, and attract Asia's rising super class. So there you have at least four groups: the working class and the middle class among the heartlanders; and in the private property group, you have the UMI and the Ultra Rich. So long as social boundaries are porous, and the average heartlander can move from the working to the middle to the UMI group, the Singapore Dream remains alive. The new twist in the old debate on inequality, though, is the gap among the elite: between the top 20 per cent and the top 1 per cent. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote last week of this Blue Inequa- lity fuelled by zooming incomes of the top 1 per cent. 'Within each profession, the top performers are now paid much better than the merely good or average performers. If you live in these big cities, you see people similar to yourself who are earning much more while benefiting from low tax rates, wielding disproportionate political power, gaining in prestige and contributing seemingly little to the social good.' I have a feeling the anger over high ministerial salaries is fuelled in part by Blue Inequality. Some critics of the high-ministerial pay policy come from the UMI class, and don't see why folks who went to school or used to work in the same office with them, should be propelled into the Ultra Rich group once they enter politics, thanks to multi-million-dollar salaries paid out of the public purse. It's easy to target the Ultra Rich as Public Enemy No. 1, as the other social groups can band together against them. But that battle is not really relevant to the lives of the working class. For this group, what matters most are a job that pays enough for a life without strife, and good schools for their children. For this group that forks out only for essentials, a set of made-to-measure curtains is a luxury. [email protected]

Yahoo! News rocks http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporesc...-032651925.html By Seah Chiang Nee The current wave of migrant workers from China and India has had an unintended side benefit for Singapore: blurring differences between local Chinese and Malays. The new competition they introduced into the workforce has helped to get these once quarrelling races to put aside old discords and jointly face the common challenge. In the 60s and 70s, ethnic conflicts were a daily story in Singapore generally over who should get a bigger piece of the economic pie. Every issue seemed to revolve around race. The impact of globalisation and the mass inflow of foreigners are helping the Chinese and Malays achieve commonality faster than anything else. It has promoted a common bond

From CNBC Published: Wednesday, 4 May 2011 | 9:53 PM ET By: Jenny Chan Vheng Yern CNBC Asia Pacific Liyana Dhamirah, 24, her husband Fazli bin Mohd Jailani, 31, and their three young children lived in a tent on the beach in Singapore for four months in 2009 when their Housing Development Board flat was repossessed as they were unable to service their mortgage loan. Household incomes in Singapore have grown only 21% in the past decade, compared to real GDP growth of 72% in the same period. The Singapore government provides subsidized housing via the Board to its citizens. Liyana and Fazli now share a rented flat with another family. "It's unfair. I'm a Singaporean, yet I'm not benefiting at all from how rich Singapore has become." Liyana and Fazli earn a combined S$800 ($652) a month but have been unable to make ends meet. "Sometimes I can't even afford a S$1 ($0.80) ice cream cone for my kids," says Fazli, a former mechanic apprentice, who is now unemployed and depends on the income from his wife's online handmade trinkets business. Singapore, which goes to the polls on Saturday, reported sterling growth in the first quarter of this year. The economy expanded 23.5 percent quarter on quarter and 8.5 percent over the previous year. This was on the back of an unprecedented growth of almost 15 percent in 2010. But not everyone in this island nation of 5 million people is celebrating. Irvin Seah, an economist at Singapore bank DBS says, "Plainly, not everyone has benefited equally from the economic growth that has occurred over the past decade." Median household incomes have grown only 21 percent in the past decade, compared to real GDP growth of 72 percent in the same period, according to government statistics. In 2010 when GDP expanded by 14.5 percent, household incomes rose on average just 0.3 percent after adjusting for inflation. "In any capitalist society where profit maximization is key, this gap will widen unless we get heavy government intervention.