LEE KUAN YEW'S POLICY THAT FAILED

In an opening address by Singapore DPM Teo Chee Hean at the “Our Population, Our Future” Townhall Dialogue on 9 October 2012 Link, Singapore raising concern is her current low fertility rate and they need to import 20K-25K new citizens per year.

Singapore Shrinking Citizan. Source : DPM Slide

Back in 1970’s Lee Kuan Yew’s concerned is fearing that Singapore's growing population might be over crowding and will burden the developing economy. LKY started a vigorous ‘Stop at Two’ family planning campaign. They also legalized abortion and sterilization, women were urged to get sterilized after their second child. Women without an O-level degree, deemed low-income and lowly-educated, were offered by the government seven days' paid sick leave and $10,000 SGD in cash incentives to voluntarily undergo the procedure.

POSTER 'STOP AT TWO'

In addition to promoting just having two children, the government also encouraged individuals to delay having their second child and encourage late marriage.

The government also added a gradually increasing array of disincentives penalising parents for having more than two children between 1969 and 1972 by raising the per-child costs of each additional child. 

Workers in the public sector would not receive maternity leave for their third child or any subsequent children. Hospitals were required to charge incrementally higher fees for each additional child. Income tax deductions would only be given for the first two children.

Large families were penalised in housing assignments. Third or fourth children were given lower priorities in education; Top priority in top-tier primary schools would be given only to children whose parents had been sterilized before the age of forty. 

Today Singaporean is concern will they be like a stranger in Singapore in near future when there are so many foreigners around.