The paradox of Singapore’s economic growth: Time & Income
September 23rd, 2009 | 
Author: By Abdul Gafoor, Social Correspondent
In a typical economic growth model, the assumption that is made about an economy that grows from a low income to a higher income is that the economic growth will bring along positive growth their real incomes and their leisure time.
Part of the growth in leisure time (each day is divided into either work or leisure) is due to the assumption that the higher incomes will allow a person to spend less time working.
The other part of the growth in leisure time is assumed to come from the fact that as the economy matures, technology improves, labour processes and industrial relations sophisticate then the working conditions including working hours will improve.
An average income of Singaporeans in 2008 was 42 times more than that in 1960, 19 times more than that in 1970, 5 times more than that in 1980, 2.4 times more than that in 1990 and 1.3 times more than that in 2000.
In fact the total income of Singapore doubles every ten years since 1960. However this economic growth does not lead to the above outcomes in Singapore.
That is because till today or rather especially today, the focus of politicians and policy makers is only in expanding GDP and not about achieving the above mentioned outcomes which is the very purpose of seeking economic growth.
In a typical country, real family and individual income will grow as economic growth continues. The term real not only refers to adjusting for inflation but actual ability to purchase i.e. buying power. However this is not true for Singapore.
In the 1960s a person earning $200 per month which is around 80% higher than the average per ca GDP will consider himself middle class, affluent and comfortable. That is also the case of a Singaporean earning around $420 per month in 1970.
An individual earning $1,500 per month in 1980 or 80% higher than the average per ca GDP may not consider himself middle class but he will still have considered his income as comfortable and sufficient. That was also the case for an individual in 1990 who earned $3,300 per month. However the story started to change since then.
Even as incomes continued to rise, fewer people were calling their incomes as comfortable or sufficient. Today a person earning $8,000 which is 80% higher than current per ca GDP even calls himself to be within the sandwiched class and neither as comfortable nor as sufficient.
In a typical country, as the country’s economic growth continues, the increasing individual income levels will allow fewer people in the household to work. However more people tend to work in reality due to the fact that the higher income of the breadwinner allows more time saving appliances to be purchased cutting time required for household work, part-time or full-time domestic helper to be employed etc which then gives the spouse and other members of the household more time to go and work.
One must note this group works out of interest and pleasure and not to supplement family income. However in Singapore the reverse is true. Since 1960 till late 1980s or early 1990s, a family could be run with a single income earner. Since 1990s that has become impossible.
Today it is unimaginable for a family to survive the cost of living without at least two earners in the family. Despite the increasing incomes, more family members have to work today to supplement family income to meet the minimum living needs.
In a typical country, as the country’s economic growth continues, the working conditions will also improve which will include working hours.
Basically labour will be used more effectively in every production process of a good or service. Furthermore with greater income levels, workers will be able to afford to spend lesser time for work. However this is also untrue in Singapore.
Up till the late 1980s or early 1990s, it was common to see people reach home by 5.30pm to 6.30pm. I remember very vividly as a child of seeing friends being picked up by their parents at school which normally will end after flag lowering between 5.45pm and 6.30pm. I also recall I can never invite any Chinese neighbor to play between 6.00pm to 7.00pm as Chinese families (and I mean the whole family including the working ones) will be having dinner around then.
Today I see the MRT being fully crowded at 10pm – 10.30 pm due to people going home just only then. Working hours without doubt have grown excessively.
Singaporeans also have been misled to believe the myth that if you work longer hours you are productive, which actually is opposite to the truth. Then there is the officially long hours and unofficially longer hours where the latter refers to work being brought home to do.
The overworked Singaporean is the reality of Singaporean workers today despite the fact their income is 42 times of 1960. This then leads one to ask whether it is necessary to work such excessively long hours to earn higher income when any proper developed economic system should be leading to shorter hours and higher income.
The cynicism that many Singaporeans have towards working shorter hours as being lazy and indolent is purely silly. Unless a person spend sufficient amount of time at home with his/her family, achieving replacement rate of fertility, promoting education amongst the kids, educating kids on values and ethics etc will be all impossible to achieve which has been the case for Singapore.
If one looked at the development cycle of other developed countries, one can find the larger working class who worked in the fields, mines and industries for longer hours during the earlier years then achieve greater family time due to shorter working hours when the country achieves economic growth.
Child bearing is an activity that requires income and time. That is why when a country’s economic growth continues and as leisure time and incomes increase, fertility rates will increase.
This is only untrue in several countries when the people decide to go for quality of kids than quantity of kids. One must note that in that choice they did not defer or decide not to having kids due to time or money which is the case of Singaporeans whose total income have doubled every ten years.
This is due to the fact that their ever increasing incomes is unable to keep up with faster increasing costs and the fact that working hours have increased instead of decreasing. The solution clearly lies in reverting to 1980s and earlier periods’ length of working days and making costs of living affordable.
In a typical country that is achieving economic growth, its population will be able to retire earlier using the higher incomes. The population also will be able to spend the longer retirement in greater comfort with the greater incomes. That is the true meaning of graceful ageing.
The only reason why retirement age has increased in developed countries is due to increasing life expectancy and lower fertility. It is rather not due to the ageing being unable to afford retirement which is the sad reality of Singaporeans.
As the economic growth of a country continues, the people will have greater amount of time and incomes for pursuing marriage. The only reason why in some developed countries marriage rates have fallen with economic growth is because with the higher incomes and greater time, individuals get greater variety o f choices in life and so they pursue the alternatives to marriage.
However in Singapore, the greatest if not one of the greatest reasons for avoiding or deferring marriage is affordability and lack of time despite the fact that incomes have risen 42 times since 1960.
In any typical country that achieves continuous economic growth, one can find that with the higher income levels and leisure time, they are more able to take care of their aged and/or sick parents, spend quality time with neighbours establishing greater sense of neighbourliness and devote more time for other pursuits such as travel, higher studies, research, innovation, spirituality, arts etc.
In Singapore despite incomes increasing multiple folds continually over four decades, Singaporeans today are complaining they are unable do all that as they cannot afford the cost and the time.
As much as politicians and policy makers brag about how many folds Singaporeans’ incomes have risen in last forty years, they fail to realize that such a phenomenal increase is void of meaning and purpose and have failed to bring about the outcomes that other countries have achieved with such increases in incomes.
As the politicians and policy makers continue to chant the mantra of continued economic growth for the decades ahead and aggressively invest for it, it will not lead to any better outcomes that it should rightfully bring about.
About the Author:
Abdul Gafoor is a researcher based in the United Kingdom
Posted in 
that is why old people have to work too
everything so expensive !!
even gov flats also so EXPENSIVE !!
You don’t work, you starve and die
You want to work, got work for you
BUT pay is so little !!
Can buy peanuts only !!
How to survive in singapore !!?
You tell me how??
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Old Guy Uncle, you hit the spot,Singapore is a place for rich people, the worst off are the locals, Ah Neh and Blangla take the low income labor jobs, Ang Moh FT take high income jobs, Pinoys and PRC take the middle income jobs, so what is left behind, is shit jobs with low pay.
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Excellent article!
All discussions of income growth by our ministers are bullcrap. Zimbabwe’s income growth is probably a million times more than any other country in the world, so should we aspire to be like them?
The only thing that matters to a human being is QUALITY OF LIFE, which include concepts like real income (aka purchasing power), leisure time, clean & beautiful environment, diversity of consumer choices, freedom from oppression, moderate levels of stress and many others…
Having a higher quality of life will make us happier, which is ultimately all that matters.
But too many of us have been brainwashed by our govt into chasing high GDP & income growth and a bigger & pricier flat, that we have forgotten all these fundamentals.
All I really want, as a citizen, is for the govt to help me be happy…
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@reader on Wed, 23rd Sep 2009 4:03 pm
Unfortunately, to the government, it’s your job to make them happy, and keep them happy. In the macro perspective, your happiness means very very little.
Reality check.
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they want to continue to milk you dry while doing their very best to continue to keep you “happy” and ignorant until it is too late…not only for you but all of us…
that is the gov’t current definition of keeping it’s citizens as “happy” and as blind as possible…
please question yourself…please think critically…and be an independent thinker…
and be better then what you can be…not what the gov’t allocate/fix you in…or conditioned you to behave…
that is not true freedom…just another way of keeping a human being in chains…in slavery…
haiz.
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To Screw Hairy on Wed, 23rd Sep 2009 1:32 pm:
Eh, cheenak babi. Where the fuck do you get off using cheenak babi derogatory terms such as “Ah Neh”?
To Admin:
I don’t give a fuck for your previous pious protestations about being ‘not racist’; I’m more interested in knowing whether you are “anti-racist” instead because if you were, you would not have let Screw Hairy’s post through.
And if there are any questions about why I too would use derogatory language as well, it should be obviouis:
1. By allowing Screw Hairy’s post through, Admin has demonstrated once again – not unusual in a chink population – that is NO redress for racism for Indians.
2. In the absence of any redress for Indians, the best thing that I can do is to return offensiveness with offensiveness; it’s the closest semblance to any equality that Indians can have in this racist site.
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Robox
alternatively you can raise an angry complaint to the site managers instead of an offensive one… two wrongs dont make a right…
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Dear Robox:
I applaud you standing up for minorities’ rights but I feel sometimes you take things too far.
If you take a step back and look at the context of Screw Hairy’s post, he was simply using “ah neh” or “ang moh” as colloquial nicknames. In fact if you look carefully, he is using the nicknames to represent different COUNTRIES (India, Bangladesh, America/Europe, Philippines, China). Claiming that he is using the nicknames in a RACIST way is not accurate.
And if you look carefully at his post, you will realize he is attacking the govt for importing too many foreigners to snatch with locals for jobs. He is not attacking the foreigners themselves.
You might argue that exhorting the govt to favor locals over foreigners is a form of discrimination, but I am sure most readers here believe that a govt has a strong moral responsibility to provide for its citizens first.
If you can calm down and be less belligerent and use less swear words, perhaps people can identify with your cause more.
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I think reader has a point but, and this is quite a big “but”. No politician in USA can get away by making a “nigger” joke about say Barrack Obama. Chris Rock may do it to himself but he is going to explicitly talk about himself in that kind of context.
Its the same thing when they talk about people of hispanic heritage and other minorities in the USA. Robox may overstepped the line himself but he has a point. Colloquial or not, the term “ah neh” is a negative tag the local ethnic chinese have used from time to time. Its the same with “ABNN” (go figure out what I meant), it does not refer to the people from India as Indians (race and nationality @ the same time) or Bangaladesh (who we like to call Bangala when the right word is Bangaladeshi). I personally would not use the term “Paki” which is a negative term used by white supremest in England to refer to people of Pakistani decent.
I do confess that the government’s actions is not helping with our xenophobia which at times can reach feverish states. However going down the path of labeling them as a term of reference even as nicknames is a ugly cycle of viciousness. Its like the local chinese do not enjoy being called “orang cheena” in Utusan or Barisa Harian. So why not stamp out the act to clear any confusion at all. After all text do not convey sarcasm.
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So bloody true!
My annual income is around spore’s per capita gdp but i have little time for my parents and children and my wife has to work equally long hours.
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To singapoor on Thu, 24th Sep 2009 1:11 pm:
1. Re: “Robox…alternatively you can raise an angry complaint to the site managers instead of an offensive one…”
Well, I have done that here already out in the open; just as openly as the constant assaults on Indians. I don’t believe in cooperating with ANYONE to help them cover up their own wrongdoings. Raising the issue privately would do exactly that.
Re: “…two wrongs dont make a right…”
But it sure as hell makes it even.
If people don’t want the retaliation, they should grow up and take the adult responsibility of practising self restraint so that they don’t experience the retaliation.
I don’t think that I – or other Indians – should be believe in being doormats for everyone else to trample all over me.
Do you?
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To reader on Thu, 24th Sep 2009 2:24 pm:
1. Re: “…I feel sometimes you take things too far.”
TOO FAR?
For what? Doing the EXACT SAME THING as the racist pigs? Why don’t you tell Screw Hairy that HE has gone too far for the VERY SAME THING?
2. Re: “If you take a step back and look at the context of Screw Hairy’s post, he was simply using “ah neh” or “ang moh” as colloquial nicknames.”
Similarly, my use of “cheenak babi” and “chink” are just terms of endearment for the Chinese.
3. Re: “If you can calm down and be less belligerent and use less swear words, perhaps people can identify with your cause more.”
So you are saying that moral arguments actually hold an appeal to racists, are you? Show me one – just ONE – time that it has, especially online where they can get away with saying anything and everything.
And with the help of website owners too.
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can both sides just apologize, forgive and forget…
i dont think the writer meant it offensively when he used the word an-neh. then again its one of those words that a person should only use if they know the other person wont be offended. since robox is offended, he deserves an apology. since robox himself responded instead of angrily but with offensivs also, perhaps he also should apologize. then forget and carry on.
alternatively both sides can argue, argue, argue, argue, fight, fight, fight, fight, tear and rip apart each other blah blah in typical singapore style… but that will not benefit both sides… it will lower the mental health well being of both sides… affect sleep, blood circulation, increase risks of chronic disease and lower fertility… oh yea happiness index will go down also…
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@Robox:
My, my. You seriously do need to take a chill pill.
First up, you used “chink” and “cheenak babi”. Has any chinese, up till now, created such a fuss like you? None did. Has Screw Hairy clearly expressed his status as a racist? Nope, but he sure proved to everyone he’s ignorant and silly. But you, unable to accommodate such people into your world; I can already imagine what kind of person you are already.
“I don’t give a fuck for your previous pious protestations about being ‘not racist’; I’m more interested in knowing whether you are “anti-racist” instead because if you were, you would not have let Screw Hairy’s post through.”
What makes you think that the admins let such comments be posted? The fact that it appeared does not equal to the admins allowing this. If you truly want the admins to take actions, instead of whining here, send an email DIRECTLY to them. You jump to conclusions too easily.
Even if they did ignore it, the fact that they allowed you to use the word “fuck” shows that they aren’t silencing any comments and are promoting free speech. Isn’t that a good thing?
“For what? Doing the EXACT SAME THING as the racist pigs? Why don’t you tell Screw Hairy that HE has gone too far for the VERY SAME THING?”
How hypocritical. Aren’t you on the same level as these “racist pigs” too, using “chink” and “cheenak babi”? Well, that aside, why don’t YOU ask Screw Hairy that he had gone too far with that comment, and instead attack the admin who might not be even aware that such a comment existed and others who are offering opinions in goodwill instead?
“Similarly, my use of “cheenak babi” and “chink” are just terms of endearment for the Chinese.”
Clearly, your use of those terms shows your hypocrisy for starting all these nonsense in the first place.
From screw hairy’s comment, we can conclude that he has no intention of being a racist just because he used a few terms or two that isn’t favorable with indians. However, you, using “chink” and “cheenak babi”. That clearly shows to everyone your malice, but you had an intention of bringing a point across, of course. Surely, up till now, I brought certain points across without using those terms Screw Hairy used. I don’t see the need for you to stoop down to his level and use it too.
“So you are saying that moral arguments actually hold an appeal to racists, are you? Show me one – just ONE – time that it has, especially online where they can get away with saying anything and everything.”
Its true that it doesn’t work. Since you are very well aware of that fact, why are YOU throwing a tantrum here, telling the admins through comments that you demand Screw Hairy’s comments be taken down when the chances of an admin being aware of this is rather low? What, you mean you didn’t know that admins had their own lives to carry on and not police the comments section for EVERY article in this website? Moreover, since you know that convincing a racist would not stop someone for being a racist, then what makes you think that spewing vulgarities in this comment section would bring any message across?
“And with the help of website owners too.”
And with the help of easily agitated people informing website owners too. Come back whining if you did and they did not reply. With evidence, of course.
Ah, I pity you for being and taking offense at the slightest thing. And I say slightest because as a Chinese, I find people who use racist terms like you to be insignificant and ignore it.
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In a nutshell, the article is spot on.
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To Robox,
Why get so worked up over nothing. “Ah Neh” is simply “Brother” in Tamil.
Ah Neh Robox you might wish to check this out:
http://anakmelayu.com/blogs/blog.php?id=44774
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I agree with Sulaiman . . .
Salutations are to greet one another -
The Chinese love to be addressed as “Ta Ker” (Ah Neh).
When I buy Indian rojak I call the Indian Muslim vendor “Mama” (Mamak). He has never been offended. It means “Uncle”.
However, we should refrain from calling the Tamils “*Keling.” They find the term derogatory. Rightly so.
*keling – A Malay term. During colonial times (India was a British colony) sepoys and Indian covicts were the order of the day. The latter were brought over to Malaya & Singapore often in shackles & chains by the Brits to build roads and buildings. In fact some of our present roads like St Andrews and buildings like City Hall were built by Indian convicts. The local Malays then were bewildered and amused as these convicts walking with chains on made a kling . . kling sound. So the term “keling” came to be associated with them. That’s a bit of Singapore’s history for us told to us by our grandparents.
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Beware this “Robox”. He is a decoy.
He isn’t Singaporean and is not residing here from the wide stuff he writes. Gopal can write libel because he is a non-Singaporean residing in the States.
It’s an open secret with today’s technology, anyone using cyber blog can be traced within the country, any country in the world for that matter. Internet cafe also requires identification.
So be factual, constructive and responsible if we are Singaporean at heart.
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