Improved Baby Bonus has limited immediate impact
Improved Baby Bonus has limited immediate impact
By Li Xueying
TWO years after the Baby Bonus scheme was improved with measures such as longer maternity leave, its immediate impact has been limited.
The age at which Singaporean women are giving birth has remained the same. So too the waiting time between marriage and children.
And while the overall number of births has inched up, this is largely due to couples having their first or second child. There are now fewer couples who are having more than three children.
'The immediate impact of the Baby Bonus scheme has not been felt, based on the age and waiting period for mothers to have first or subsequent children,' said the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority's (ICA) latest report on registration of births and deaths.
The scheme was first introduced in April 2001 to encourage couples to have a second and third child. In 2004, the raft of benefits was extended to the first and fourth child.
To monitor the change in trends after 2004, the ICA collated data on how long couples waited to have their first child after marriage and subsequent children.
It showed that last year, the age of first-time mothers was 29.4 - a slight increase from 29.2 in 2005.
Couples had their first child 843 days - or about 28 months - after marriage.
Overall, however, there was an increase in the number of live births - 38,317 babies were born last year, up from 37,492 a year earlier.
It was 'encouraging' that the number of first, second and third order births had increased since 2004, the report noted.
But this was still short of the 60,000 babies Singapore needs annually to maintain its current population size.
Reacting to the report, the National Population Secretariat said the Government will continue to monitor the package of measures and promote a more pro-family environment here.
'It is a growing social trend that people are getting married later and subsequently having children later; it does not mean that the Baby Bonus has not made an impact, since the number of live births has actually increased since the enhancement of the Baby Bonus scheme in 2004.'
By Li Xueying
TWO years after the Baby Bonus scheme was improved with measures such as longer maternity leave, its immediate impact has been limited.
The age at which Singaporean women are giving birth has remained the same. So too the waiting time between marriage and children.
And while the overall number of births has inched up, this is largely due to couples having their first or second child. There are now fewer couples who are having more than three children.
'The immediate impact of the Baby Bonus scheme has not been felt, based on the age and waiting period for mothers to have first or subsequent children,' said the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority's (ICA) latest report on registration of births and deaths.
The scheme was first introduced in April 2001 to encourage couples to have a second and third child. In 2004, the raft of benefits was extended to the first and fourth child.
To monitor the change in trends after 2004, the ICA collated data on how long couples waited to have their first child after marriage and subsequent children.
It showed that last year, the age of first-time mothers was 29.4 - a slight increase from 29.2 in 2005.
Couples had their first child 843 days - or about 28 months - after marriage.
Overall, however, there was an increase in the number of live births - 38,317 babies were born last year, up from 37,492 a year earlier.
It was 'encouraging' that the number of first, second and third order births had increased since 2004, the report noted.
But this was still short of the 60,000 babies Singapore needs annually to maintain its current population size.
Reacting to the report, the National Population Secretariat said the Government will continue to monitor the package of measures and promote a more pro-family environment here.
'It is a growing social trend that people are getting married later and subsequently having children later; it does not mean that the Baby Bonus has not made an impact, since the number of live births has actually increased since the enhancement of the Baby Bonus scheme in 2004.'
posted by Alex at
2:19 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home