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Are financial incentives given by the government effective in boosting birth rates in Singapore? This is the central question in Dr Kelvin Seah’s (NUS Economics and Institute of Labour Economics (IZA)) piece, ‘Commentary: Parenthood Incentives – Singapore Cannot Keep Doing More of the Same Without Knowing Whether These Really Work’ (Channel NewsAsia, February 2023). This […]
The Singapore Chinese Health study, a long-term interdisciplinary study involving researchers from NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences following about a thousand Singaporean Chinese participants for more than two decades, has found that positive psychological states can be correlated with better longevity. Findings from this study […]
As one of Singapore’s International Baccalaureate (IB) schools, Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) was founded on 1 March 1886. IB has experienced worldwide growth in recent years, with Asia-Pacific having seen the fastest increase. The ‘brand recognition’ of IB is primarily responsible for its rising popularity. IB’s brand recognition includes an elite image, liberal and progressive pedagogies, […]
A declining birth rate in Singapore has been a reality for some time. However, the current situation might spell demographic trouble: it had recently been confirmed that Singapore’s total fertility rate has dropped to its historical lowest of 1.05. Among other policies designed to combat this trend of decreasing fertility, the Singapore government recently announced […]
Congratulations to Assistant Professor Cynthia Siew (NUS Psychology) on being awarded the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship for her project titled Measuring the Singaporean Mental Lexicon: Lexical-Semantic Norms for Singapore English Words! In Measuring the Singaporean Mental Lexicon: Lexical-semantic norms for Singapore English words, funded for S$747,188 by the Social Science and Humanities Research […]
Congratulations to Assistant Professor Kung Chien Wen (NUS History) on being awarded the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship for his project Sinospheric Subjects: Chinese Singaporeans, China, and Taiwan, 1976-1990! In Sinospheric Subjects, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Singapore, Asst Prof Kung seeks to illuminate ordinary Chinese Singaporeans’ relations with […]
“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” These words, spoken by 38th U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, […]
In “Tax incentives for foreign investors: How effective?” (Business Times, February 2023), Distinguished Professor Ivan Png (NUS Business, Economics, and Information Systems and Analytics) questions the cost-effectiveness of tax incentives to promote inbound investments and technological transfers. The incentive schemes he names are the Pioneer Certificate Incentive, and the Development and Expansion Incentive. Prof Png […]
Since 2020, countries all over the world have struggled to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. As to be expected, “successful” containment of the spread of the viral infection should generate electoral support for the incumbent government, as in the case of South Korea in April 2020. However, the relative success in infection containment within Singapore resulted […]
Photo: ‘Migrant domestic workers are often overworked resulting in caregiver burden’ by Kua Chee Siong from The Straits Times In aging societies like Singapore, eldercare has begun to expand beyond an elderly person’s immediate family, to involve live-in foreign domestic workers who are tasked to care for their charges. This new dimension of caregiving relations […]