Poverty In Singapore

Poverty In Singapore

Overview

THERE IS THIS MYTH that Singapore is a rich country and its citizens are well-taken care of. Nothing could be further from the truth. The 1998 United Nations Human Development Index showed that Singapore ranked 28 on the list behind countries like Barbados and Malta.
In fact many households earn so little that they cannot afford to give their children pocket-money for school, resulting in the students going hungry for the day.
Quoted Examples:

•Ang Siew Min, 70 was fatally run over by a hit-and-run driver as she was returning home at 6:40 am, working as a night-shift toilet cleaner. Not only did the she have to toil in the night shift, her pay was so meagre that she could not even afford to eat lunch. To top it off she had to save to help take care of her 50-year old mentally retarded daughter.

•Koh Foong Hua worked as cleaner for a measly US$200 a month which she had to share with her 70-year-old sister. The sisters are so hard-up that even vegetables during meal-times are a luxury.

•77 year old toilet cleaner, Liang Ming Jun, was on his way home around midnight after work. He couldn't afford the fare for a bus ride and had to walk home. He was hit and killed by a car.

•A 96-year-old woman, Tan Ah Siew, has to go to the garbage dump to pick out odds and ends to sell to support herself.

•Loh Khoon Hua , 76 runs a little business selling household provisions. His paltry income had to support middle-aged daughters who are wheelchair bound and suffering from polio since birth, and a wife who is senile and incapable of looking after herself. His problems took a dramatic turn for the worse when the Government upped the rental of his shop from US$150 to US$450 a month.
Statistics:

•In 1999, nearly 2,000 children did not attend school because their parents could not afford it. Mohammad Hirwan is one such child. His parents earn about US $600 a month, hardly sufficient for a family in Singapore. As a result the boy's parents had to take him out of school when he was nine. His siblings did not fare any better. All of them dropped out of school because of poverty.
The reason why the poor in Singapore are not more visible is that the Ministry of Community Development and Sports conduct frequent raids through its Destitute Persons Service, looking for and picking up vagrants. If Singapore seems to have less destitute, it is not because the numbers are not present. The real reason is that the PAP Government is just much more efficient in clearing the streets of homeless people.
With the costs of living rising, or at least not decreasing, and wages continuing to be depressed, Singaporeans are going to facing increasingly dire economic times.

What is poverty?

Absolute Poverty
In Singapore, the Minimum Household Expenditure (MHE) forms the
statistical basis for an income cut-off to measure absolute poverty. The MHE is computed from actual expenditure data from the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) for a subsistence budget that comprises food, clothing and shelter. This subsistence budget is then grossed up with a multiplier of 1.25 to account for the other necessary expenditures for normal living

Relative Poverty
There are no fixed guidelines regarding the use of mean or median income
to set the relative poverty line. The advantage of using mean income as a cut-off lies in the ease of interpretation. However, the median, unlike the mean is less affected by the extreme values of the income distribution and by sampling fluctuations.
In Singapore, relative poverty had been measured based on a poverty
line defined as half of the median per capita household income.

Why Poverty Exist in Singapore?

Rising cost of living
With the progress of society, standard of living increases as well as cost of living
Although cost of living increases, the pay/ salary people earn remains unchanged
As they have lesser purchasing power, their proportion of income to be spent on goods and services are higher

Example:
A woman worked as cleaner for a measly US$200 a month which she had to share with her 70-year-old sister. The sisters are so hard-up that even vegetables during meal-times are a luxury.

Financial Crisis
Some are either retrenched or unemployed
Conditions are further made worse when they have big families and he/she is the sole breadwinner

Example:
A technician lost his job and had no income for about half a year had to watch his two young children live on biscuits for days. A social worker said that the man had no money even to take the bus to find a job. The family was literally penniless.

Democratic Society
Singapore believes in meritocracy :"You reap what you sow"
Hence, no equal distribution in wealth

Who are considered as the poor in Singapore?

The Aged
They are old and are unable to find jobs in the fast paced society because people consider them slow. Since they are slow, they are less productive and hence are more likely to be jobless. Many then engage in activities such as picking up metal cans, cardboards and newspapers from dustbins. They are later sold for petty cash which seems to be the only source of income some of these aged have.

Example:
96 year old, Soh Siew Min, has to go to the garbage dump to pick out odds and ends to sell to support herself.

The illiterate/ low-educated
People who depend on working as cleaners, and all other types of menial jobs for a living are stereotyped poor and uneducated. The mindsets of the people hardly change. Very often than not, these workers who do such jobs come from poor family backgrounds, and therefore are not educated.
Similarly, their children would also not be privileged enough to enter schools to receive education. Such is the viciousness of the poverty cycle. Employers looking for prospective subordinates also prefer to trust a laminated sheet of paper than a person's actual capability. It is the mentality of such people that diminish whatever hopes and aspirations the poor has.

Example:
In 1999, nearly 2,000 children did not attend school because their parents could not afford it. Mohammad Hirwan is one such child. His parents earn about US $600 a month, hardly sufficient for a family in Singapore. As a result the boy's parents had to take him out of school when he was nine. His siblings did not fare any better. All of them dropped out of school because of poverty.

How are the poor classifed as the poor?

DATA FOR POVERTY MEASUREMENT IN SINGAPORE
Household surveys are the major source of income data for poverty measurement and analysis in Singapore. The major household survey is the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The expenditure data come from the Household Expenditure Survey (HES).

Household Expenditure Survey
The survey’s main objective is to obtain the latest consumption expenditure of private households for updating the weighting pattern and the basket of goods and services for the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Members of each household are required to record detailed information on the type and amount of goods and services purchased over a period of two weeks. The coverage of expenditure in the survey is confined only to consumption expenditure. Other forms of expenditure such as income tax, repayment of loan, purchase of properties, etc. are excluded.

Labour Force Survey
The annual Labour Force Survey is designed to collect data on the
economic activities of the population, including detailed information on
employment and unemployment, characteristics of the labour force and
economically inactive persons. Some information on households could also be
obtained from the LFS. The sample size for the LFS is about 25,000 households

Policies to Alleviate Poverty

Government -Policy Maker

Public Assistance Scheme / Special Grant (for PRs)
○Interim (Short-term) Financial Assistance Scheme (IFAS)
○Rent and Utilities Assistance Scheme (RUAS)
○Home Ownership Plus Education Scheme (HOPE)
○Work Assistance Programme (WAP)
○Kindergarten Financial Assistance Scheme (KiFAS)
○Student Care Fee Assistance Scheme (SCFA)
○Centre-based Financial Assistance Scheme for Child Care (CFAC)
○Government schemes, administered by CDCs

“Local” financial assistance schemes introduced by CDCs

•Disbursed by members of parliament in each ward within CDC
○Short term –about 3 months
○Small quantum –about $200 pm
○In-kind assistance e.g. food vouchers

Community

Community Development Councils (CDCs)
•Voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs)
•Partnership with business, charities

Many helping hands’ approach

•Co-funding
•Fund raising from corporate sector, public

Family Support

Promotion of family values
•Legislative, administrative measures (e.g. tax reliefs for caring for parents and CPF top-ups, use of Medisave, Maintenance of Parents Act)

Independence/ Self-reliance

•Jobs
○Education, skills development/upgrading, training and re-training
○Job creation, investment promotion (attracting foreign investment), entrepreneurship promotion
○Jobs links, matching

•Employment, re-employment
○Skills Development Fund
○Skills Redevelopment Programme
○Training allowance
○Absentee payroll support
○Self-employment Assistance Scheme

Non-Government Organisations

•NGOs, particularly the voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs), play a very important role in the provision and delivery of social services in Singapore

•Religion-based community welfare service organisations e.g. Presbyterian, Methodist, Buddhist, Moral Society, etc

•Clan or ethnic based
○Clan associations long history in Singapore
○Ethnic self-help groups e.g. Mendaki, SINDA, CDAC

•Singapore Buddhist Lodge provides free meals every day at lunch hour
○A simple vegetarian meal of rice and stir-fried vegetables with dessert, watermelon

Conclusion

In Singapore today, although we are a comparatively richer and more advanced 1st world country, poverty has worsened. Many in Singapore lack the means of proper provision and sanitation. Have the governments of this age forsaken the poor?
Poverty is linked closely to the standard of living and the perceived social
norm of the country or the geographic region. This explains the multitude of
approaches that researchers and statistical agencies of different countries devise to
monitor the incidence of poverty. In Singapore, as for many other countries, the
monetary approach to poverty measurement is adopted for statistical measurement.
This approach allows for the calculation of aggregated statistical indicators that are commonly used in poverty analysis.