FEWER COUPLES HAVING BIG FAMILIES
The announcements on Tuesday for large families join a suite of marriage and parenthood measures rolled out by the Singapore government in recent years.
They include six additional weeks of shared paid leave for new parents, from Apr 1; and 10 additional weeks from the year after.
The Baby Bonus was also increased in 2023 to encourage more children.
According to NPTD surveys, more than a third of married couples want to have three or more children, but fewer couples are actually doing so.
The proportion of married, female Singapore residents aged 40 to 49 who have three or more children decreased from 24 per cent in 2014 to 18 per cent in 2024, numbers from the Department of Statistics showed.
In 2023, Singapore’s resident total fertility rate also dropped below 1.0 for the first time.
On Tuesday, Mr Wong also announced other one-off support measures in this space.
Families will receive S$500 in Child LifeSG credits for each child aged 12 and below this year. The credits will be disbursed in July for children aged one to 12 this year, and in April 2026 for those born this year.
Singaporean children aged 13 to 16 will get S$500 in top-ups to their Edusave accounts, while those aged 17 to 20 will get an additional S$500 in their Post-Secondary Education accounts.
The families of about 455,000 children are expected to benefit from the Child LifeSG credits and about 300,000 students will benefit from the top-ups to their Edusave and Post-Secondary Education accounts.
