GOING GREY FOR STARTERS

An Interview with Angelique Chan

By
Mamta Sachan Kumar &
Cheryl Tan Shiling

We inaugurate Bibliotheque (renamed as People), a spanking new section for the Sociology blog Singapore – to be filled with lively reports of in-person interviews with substantial somebodies – with a prestigiously befitting conversation had with our very own, Associate Professor Angelique Chan.

Prof. Chan discusses with us the paper she presented on the 18th of October, at the Singapore Economic Policy Conference 2007, organized by SCAPE – Singapore Centre for Applied and Policy Economics. Entitled, “Fertility, Migration, and Labour Market Trends and Issues in Singapore”, the paper involves two projects, one on ageing in Singapore (on which a book of the same name was recently published)*, and the other a collaborated effort with Associate Professor Paulin Straughan on fertility.

Beginning with her time-honoured interest on gerontology, Prof. Chan outlines the predicted near future of Singapore’s increasingly aged population. With a rapidly greying citizenry, twin demographic predicaments unfold. The first is an expectant population shrinkage by 2025 and the second, a higher dependency ratio. Aggravating the apparent problem of more elderly is that of fertility decline and a subsequent decrease in family size that inevitably contributes to the proportion of elderly, i.e. those 65 years and above, as the fastest growing segment of the population as a whole.

Prof. Chan describes in some detail, the socio-economic perspective on the low fertility crisis that Singapore currently faces. Employing a qualitative approach with focus groups and by conducting about 1500 surveys completed by couples married from 1980 onwards, key indicators including the couples’ attitudes and expectations of bearing and raising children, their take on parenting and the question of feasibility of a work-family balance were accounted for. The results revealed a rather bleak 20% of the women to have three or more children and who subscribe to the full-time, “perfect mom” motherhood ideology. A majority of the couples surveyed expressed great difficulty in achieving any suitable family arrangement that could encourage child-bearing. Unsurprisingly, one of the big barriers cited against having children was the costliness of the whole affair.

One of the most pressing consequences of these dynamics of resistance towards child-bearing and a concomitant rise in elderly is that of the problems to be faced by the labour market to sustain the economy. It is no wonder then that we already see a growing reliance on the foreign talent pool to counter shortages in labour supply. Prof. Chan provides an eye-opening measure of just how great this dependency is – 2006 registered a population growth of 4.4% of which just 1.8% comprised the resident population and a significantly higher 2.6% was made up of foreigners.

We apprehensively ask Prof. Chan about the clock-ticking viability of such a scenario where foreigners have already out-numbered locals… the question that has plagued the papers and many a person’s mind – will this foreign talent dilute local culture or somehow miraculously add to Singapore’s vibrancy? She affords us a level-headed response and one with measured sense of positive composure. We must accept this as an inevitable consequence of globalization, she says. And we should simultaneously consider the government’s greater attention to the delicacy of such matters as the influx of foreigners. Related policy measures newly implemented such as changes in the Central Provident Fund (CPF) scheme and later retirement age, should be viewed in the same context as actions taken by the State to stabilize the incumbent structural changes that will happen, and so we should not see them as necessarily negative.

Prof. Chan was a sporty candidate for our very first interview and was kind enough to divulge a little about her coming ventures. She hopes to work on a three-way comparative study involving Japan – Singapore –Philippines that will focus on health and gender differences in disability. We thank her for her time and patience to accommodate our interview in her busy schedule.

And so a library of interviews is born and we chose most deliberately to begin with a piece on our revered elderly, the many in our midst towards whom perhaps a change in attitude will change their course in society. Our cycle of life.

*A synopsis on Ageing in Singapore is available here.