A STUDY OF POVERTY IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Since attaining independence, development efforts in Singapore have been geared primarily towards the promotion of economic growth and the raising of the general standard of living, These efforts were undertaken in the midst of a series of crises, as a consequence of which the focus has largely been on questions of "survival”, and issues of distribution and equity have generally been regarded as secondary concerns. The success of these efforts is reflected in the high rates of growth of GNP, the establishment of a sizeable industrial base, reduction in the extent of open unemployment, and. improvements in the overall standard of living, In addition to these economic achievements, there have been extensions and improvements in the fields of education, public housing and health services, which have contributed to the enlargement of opportunities and to the enhancement of the quality of life among the general population. Despite these accomplishments, however, our findings suggest that there continues to be a substantial degree of poverty in the society, involving approximately one-third of the population. Indeed, over a period of two decades the trend appears to be for poverty to increase. Studies of the experiences of a number of countries suggest that, generally, development has tended to be a selective process in which some social groups are facilitated in their efforts to achieve upward social mobility, while others face numerous constraints. In this study, we examined the manner in which the poor were constrained with respect to economic opportunities and access to the social services, In relation to the economy a large proportion of the population in poverty were found to be, directly or indirectly, unemployable. Those who were employed were found to be engaged largely in low-skilled and low-wage employment, which were in many ways marginal and vulnerable. Various institutional constraints serve to limit wage increases and opportunities for upgrading skills, At the same time, the effect of inflation has been to depress real incomes, while structural changes in the economy cause such persons to become functionally redundant. It is undoubtedly the case that without the existence of the present social services, the poor would be very much worse-off than they presently are. However, various findings suggest that there are a number. of constraints upon the social services which limit the extent to which the poor are able to use and benefit from the social services so that, as a group, they remain the worst-off in the population in terms of education, housing, health and other basic necessities. In an increasingly "affluent society" poverty tends to become "privatised" and increasingly hidden from public consciousness. In addition, the prevalence of the individualistic and cultural perspectives, which attribute poverty largely to personal failure or to regressive cultural traits, serves to inhibit awareness of the institutional and structural constraints that affect many of the poor and keep them in poverty in spite of all that they are able to do to help themselves. Poverty must be perceived as, fundamentally, a structural problem. At a broader level, the problem of poverty in Singapore must be regarded as an instance of the multiple problems of underdevelopment in the Third World. In this respect, the solution to the problem of poverty here, as elsewhere in the Third World, hinges crucially upon the success of the adopted development strategies in enabling countries of the Third World to transcend the historical and structural constraints that produced the phenomenon of underdevelopment. Nevertheless, in spite of the complex issues involved and the many difficulties that remain to be resolved, we believe that more can (and would) be done to ameliorate poverty if only the nature and extent of the problem is realistically perceived.