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For Love of Country
By: Philip Bowring
Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2000
With
its past bans on long hair and chewing gum, Singapore has earned a
reputation for unsubtle attempts at social engineering. So at first glance
the campaign, launched by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in his Aug. 20
National Day Rally speech, urging Singaporeans to "go forth and
multiply," may seem another tedious Big Brother exercise. The
government plans to unleash large dollops of tax money, as well as
propaganda, to persuade Singaporeans to procreate more. The policy has
already aroused negative reactions at home, as well as sniggers abroad.
Snicker if you will, but rather than fighting a rearguard action against
modern mores, Singapore may be leading the developed world to a more
realistic view of the relationship between economics and demography. The
fertility rate, the number of children born per woman of reproductive age,
has declined 35% in Singapore since 1970. The government's new financial
inducements for third children, paid maternity leave and state-funded
child-care centers may be just the beginning. Eventually we may see large
tax and pension penalties for those who, voluntarily, do not reproduce.
And why not?
This is not a question of forcing people to have or (as in the case of
China's dangerous one-child policy) not to have children. The question is
whether to create a link between costs and benefits for society as a
whole. All economics is about making choices among scarce resources.
Children are a short-term cost and a long-term benefit.
In most of the world over the past century, people have been in abundance.
Now they are increasingly scarce in most affluent societies. Asian
"family values" notwithstanding, Hong Kong and Singapore's
fertility rates are among the lowest in the world, similar to Italy's,
which is at the bottom of the West European fertility league. The average
woman in Singapore has only 1.5 children, compared with the 2.1 needed to
achieve a stable level of population. Taiwan and South Korea, too, are
close to the European norm. Japan already has one of the world's oldest
populations.
Despite the wonders of technology, there is no escaping that people
are—or should be—the most important factor of production. That is even
more the case in advanced societies than in developing ones. However much
money we save today, our standard of living in retirement will be
primarily determined by the productivity of our individual national
economies. And that is directly related to availability of the human
factor of production. If you deliberately do not bear—and invest
in—offspring who will create wealth when you are past working age, you
should not expect the same pension or health care in old age as those who
do. (Liberal immigration policies could help change the equation. But most
Asian nations would find it difficult, at least politically, to absorb
large numbers from other cultures.)
There is, of course, much more to having children than just brutal
economics. But let us not imagine that economics doesn't enter frequently
into government consideration of family size and birth rates. For half a
century the West has, rightly, been advocating family planning programs to
reduce birth rates in developing countries. The World Bank and other
agencies have long promoted policies on family planning aimed at cutting
birth rates. Nations that saw the wisdom of encouraging (but not forcing)
family planning prospered because fewer children meant there was more
money to invest in schools, health services, roads and industries. East
Asia generally did well, particularly Thailand, South Korea and Singapore.
Laggards Vietnam, the Philippines and Burma continued to have excessive
birth rates.
But
that was yesterday. In much of East Asia, as in Europe, birth rates have
collapsed to well below the replacement rate. Pro-natal policies are now
as needed in some countries as birth control is in others. Yet self-styled
"liberals" who were once at the forefront of family-planning
campaigns now suggest that government measures to raise birth rates are an
attack on individual liberty.
Later retirement is a partial answer to the problems of aging populations
and increased longevity. Immigration is a partial answer to low birth
rates. But given their responsibilities for ensuring minimum standards of
health and welfare and for creating conditions for economic stability,
governments do have reason to ensure that there is some link between
able-bodied peoples' input and output. The issue is not just one of having
children who, one hopes, will take some responsibility for their parents'
care in old age. The essential point is that governments should have
policies on demography, as they do on education, that consider the
long-term needs of their society and nation. Let us hope that Singapore's
petty-minded approach to chewing gum does not blind others to the wisdom
of its policy on this vital question.
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