Singapore to pay new parents £40,000 per child in desperate bid to counter plunging birth rate
Singapore's prime minister described the policy as “a fundamental shift in how we support families”
Singapore has offered to hand parents £40,000 per child in a desperate bid to encourage young people to start families.
Listen to this article
The Singaporean government is seeking to tackle the country's plunging birth rates by providing S$70,000 (£40,000) for each child over 17 years.
The state's prime minister Lawrence Wong said families everywhere were "under growing pressure" and vowed the government would "stand with" young people having children.
The whopping sum will not be paid out all at once but rather be delivered via instalments from birth until the child turns 17.
Payments will start with an S$10,000 (£7,331) lump sum given as a "baby gift".
A similar amount will be awarded for higher education when the child reaches 17.
Read more: Bridget Phillipson urges Britons to have more children amid ‘worrying’ birth rates
Grants will also be provided to cover education, health and child support, in addition to discounted nursery care fees for pre-school children.
Childcare leave will be increased and will be fully covered by the government rather than employers.
Currently childcare leave is paid for by companies with the money only partially reimbursed.
Families applying for government-subsidised flats will also see their chances of winning allocation ballots boosted for every additional child.
Singapore, along with many countries across the developed world, is facing a plummeting birth rate.
Wong described the policy as a “a fundamental shift in how we support families”.
He told Singapore’s annual National Day Rally: “Today, families everywhere are under growing pressure.
“We want every family to know: if you choose to have children, the government will stand with you. We will provide more support, and over more years.”
Between 2001 and 2025, the country's fertility rate - the number of children a woman gives birth to during her lifetime - fell from 1.41 to 0.87.
The birth rate required to maintain a stable population is 2.1.
Only Taiwan, South Korea and the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau have lower birth rates.
Birth rates in England have similarly plunged to new lows since 2010, which has partly been blamed on the increased cost of living and the reluctance of women to sacrifice their careers.
The estimated number of children born per woman fell to just under 1.4 for England and Wales in 2025, down from 1.9 in 2010.