Singapore's birth rate falls to record low - only 35,605 babies born in 2022

Declining birth rates and greying population are not new issues for the city-state.

Singapore’s birth rate hit a record low in 2022 with only 35,605 babies born in that year when the country also registered the highest number of deaths annually since 1960, according to media reports on Tuesday.

Official figures released by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) showed a 7.9 per cent drop in the number of live births. The drop was from 38,672 in 2021 to 35,605 in 2022.

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There were 26,891 deaths in 2022, a 10.7 per cent increase compared with the 24,292 recorded in 2021 in the Report on Registration of Births and Deaths. This was the highest number of total yearly deaths since 1960, reported Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao.

The report also stated that women are progressively getting older before they start having children, with the median age of first-time mothers rising to 31.9 years in 2022 from 30.6 in 2018. There was minimal change in the median ages of mothers who gave birth to their second and subsequent children during the same period.

The number of first-time mothers with university degrees rose to 63.6 per cent, compared with 58 per cent in 2017. Singapore’s declining birth rates and greying population are not new issues, with the Government implementing several measures to try and mitigate their impact.

In February, the Government announced plans to support those with marriage and parenthood aspirations after Singapore’s total fertility rate (TFR) hit a historic low of 1.05 last year.

This includes a greater priority for first-timer families with children, as well as younger married couples, in their Build-To-Order flat applications, including an additional ballot. Other measures include cash gifts and grants, as well as Government-paid paternity leave being extended to four weeks.

In response to queries on the declining TFR, National University of Singapore sociologist Tan Ern Ser remarked that likely factors include children increasingly not being seen as part of retirement planning, while the cost of raising them has risen in an increasingly Vuca (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world.

More and more resources are necessary to bring up a child, and that is also a constraint on the number of children a couple can afford, he said.

“Other oft-cited factors are the rise of dual-income households, in part to make enough to maintain a middle-class lifestyle; women’s late marriages; priorities given to career; and in turn the lack of work-life harmony in jobs which emphasise deliverables,” the Straits Times quoted Dr Tan as saying.

He added that Covid-19 may have been a factor because of its impact on employment and income insecurity, as well as in reinforcing the perception of the increasingly Vuca world. The increasing number of deaths, said Dr Tan, is also consistent with Singapore’s rapidly ageing population.

In 2022, the leading causes of death were malignant neoplasms – also known as cancerous tumours – and heart and hypertensive diseases.

These collectively accounted for 49.5 per cent of all registered deaths in 2022. Additionally, lung and respiratory system diseases, as well as cerebrovascular diseases – conditions that affect blood flow to the brain, like strokes and aneurysms – were prominent factors responsible for 22.1 per cent and 5.8 per cent of deaths, respectively.

Compared with 2021, the proportion of deaths attributed to lung and respiratory system diseases increased by 1.8 per cent, while the proportion of deaths caused by malignant neoplasms decreased by 2.5 per cent, noted the report.

Death by unnatural causes, such as accidents, suicides, and other external causes, constituted 3.3 per cent of the total cases.

Numbers released on Saturday by the non-profit suicide prevention centre Samaritans of Singapore showed there were 476 suicides in 2022, the highest number since 2000.