| Yawning
Bread. 29 September 2008
More people on this island, but poorer
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In my mind, however, I made another connection, for I recalled that just a few days prior, another front page headline said that Singaporeans should expect this year's economic growth to dip below 4 percent [2]. That means we're going to get poorer on average, for if the economic pie grows by a smaller amount than the number of mouths to feed, what else can it mean? Just to check my facts, I searched the website of the Department of Statistics for GDP figures for the first half of 2008.
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As you can see, at constant prices (i.e. factoring out inflation), our economy grew 4.5 percent in the first half of 2008 compared with the first half of last year. However, the second half of 2008 will almost surely be worse. Economists are using the word "recession", which implies negative growth, quarter on quarter. For 2008 as a whole, GDP growth may be no more than 3 percent. In fact, the sectorial GDP figure for the manufacturing sector, which is the biggest sector of our economy, making up almost a quarter of it, is already awash in blood. The 2nd quarter 2008 manufacturing GDP was 6.4% lower than the same period last year. [3] Even worse news came on 26 September when the Economic Development Board issued an advisory that said,
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As you can see, although GDP growth was 7.7 percent last year over 2006, it averaged only 3.3 percent per person, because we had 4.3 percent more people living in Singapore than in the previous year. If this year we have just 3 percent GDP growth, but 5.5 percent population growth, our GDP per capita will fall. Of course, individuals' incomes will vary greatly -- some people will do well even in times of adversity. Another thing to note is that the "average" tells you nothing about the spread, i.e. the income gap between rich and poor. Is it still widening? One more thing: We learnt from the ministerial salary controversy last year that ministers' and senior civil servants' remuneration are linked to GDP growth, which this year. is still likely to be positive. But per capita GDP (which this year is likely to be negative) is ignored in their calculations. I'm sure I don't have to spell out what that might mean. Apart form the record-setting 5.5 percent population growth, other demographic details are quite interesting. You can download the pdf file Population Trends 2008 from the Department of Statistics' website. Let me cull a few key facts for you: Firstly, the rate of growth of our total population has been accelerating. In 2004, it grew 1.3 percent over the previous year, but now it's 5.5 percent. In this 5-year period, the number of citizens has been growing by no more than 1 percent per year, so obviously much of the population growth has been due to increases in permanent residents and foreigners living here.
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The result of this trend has been that about one in three persons living on this island are non-citizens. The data from the "Population and citizenship" table directly above is displayed in graphical form here:
From the pie-chart, you will see that virtually a quarter of our population (nearly 1.2 million), are not even permanent residents. They are given the classification of "non-residents", which I consider quite misleading, since they are clearly resident here among us. The Straits Times mentioned that "latest figures show 757,000 work permit holders, 143,000 on employment passes and 85,000 foreign students" [4], though I couldn't find the same data from the Statistics Department's website for verification. These figures do not add up to 1.2 million. There are another 212,000 unaccounted for. These would be S-Pass holders, dependents of Employment Pass holders and people here on "Long-term Social Visit Passes".
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As for the "resident population" which jargon means citizens and permanent residents, there is plenty of other detail available from the publication Population Trends 2008, such as age pyramid, marriage rates, divorce rates, total fertility rates by race, and so on. I'll just leave you with one more pie chart, that of racial composition:
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We are used to thinking of the Chinese as making up about 75 percent of the population. This is more or less true only if we speak of the "resident" population. If we take the total population, the "local Chinese" make up only 56 percent. Of course, a large number of "non-residents' are also ethnically Chinese, though the exact figure is unknown because the government considers it too sensitive to release data pertaining to the national origins of foreigners living here. More interesting is the possibility that the total number of people of South Asian ancestry may now outnumber people of Malay and Indonesian ancestry. There are 323,000 "residents" classified as "Indian". Of Work Permit holders, a huge number (maybe a third of them) are from the subcontinent. That's about 250,000. If you add these numbers, plus some Employment Pass holders and their dependents, you may find that people of South Asian ancestry may total 600,000. There are nearly 500,000 local Malays. Even if we add the Indonesian maids, the total's probably no more than 550,000. But would this discussion be crossing an OB
marker? Are Singaporeans mature enough to talk about changing demographic
trends without being emotionally invested in the results? © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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Singapore's total population increased 5.5 percent, the headlines said on 
