Week 4: Singapore

Urban/Rural Continuum and Singapore Chilli Crab

I know this has been a heavy week for many in the US - resisting ice (snowstorm and/or politically.) I hope this blog post brings you momentary respite - and if nothing else - a cozy recipe to indulge in.

I will admit that I was super excited to dive into the foil to rurality (Papua New Guinea last week), to a near-fully urban country/city-state this week. My options for near 100% urban zones based on the UN World Urbanization Prospects were Gibraltar, the Holy See, Monaco (covered in Week 2), and Singapore. I knew I wanted to find every excuse to make Singapore Chilli Crab, so that’s what we picked.

The story of Singapore is really a story of immigration; from colonial times, to its independence from Malaysia in 1965, continuing to today. This article from the Migration Policy Institute is dated, but the information is still pertinent:

Unlike the migration story in Monaco which imports workers on a daily basis (commuter economy) because it cannot house them all, Singapore takes a different tactic of housing immigrants and making it home. Additionally, Singapore is also in a geographically strategically critical position, and has to navigate disputes in the South China Sea between China and SE Asian countries like Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and also manage to maintain good diplomatic and economic relations with both the US and China. What does this mean for the demography and thus armed forces of a land constrained city-state that has a relatively tiny population of just 6M? (For context, neighbors have more than 5x that in terms of populations: Malaysia is at 36M, Thailand at 72M, Vietnam at 102M to name a few.) Is migration/conscription a tactic to boost military strength in numbers? Are they doing something else?

So today, I decided to dig into 2 stories - housing and military - not necessarily what you think of when you think of a place that is so shiny, so delicious, and home to the most incredible airport in the world (butterfly garden!), but important nonetheless.

Housing, fertility, and migration

Before getting into the types of housing, it’s helpful to start with getting a sense of who lives in Singapore in the first place, and what social stratification (by citizenship/ethnicity/etc.) means (if anything) for various outcomes.

The Population Brief that I draw data from is fascinating. Owing to migration patterns rooted in economic history, the ethnic mix in Singapore still reflects those trends (and did I mention already, makes for legit the best food combinations.)

The overall demographic story holds here as in other high-income, industrialized countries that are currently in the Second Demographic Transition - characterized by low fertility (TFR of 0.7), high median age (44), about a quarter of its population above age 65), rising age at first marriage (30 and 31 for women and men respectively) - resulting in a rapidly aging population and labor shortages.

But what’s interesting in the Singapore example is how the heavily urbanized population actually contributes to trends in demographic indicators (perhaps hastening the transition compared to other places.)

For example, let’s look at the Total Fertility Rate (TFR). While the overall TFR is low (0.97), that of ethnic Chinese is lowest at 0.83, Indians at 0.91 and Malays at 1.58. (Figure below).

Instructive to the low fertility debates and policies being floated around today, Singapore has had concerns about slowing birth rates for decades now. From the Association for Asian Studies:

Immigration established and sustained the population of Singapore from its beginnings as a colony and continued unabated into the twentieth century until independence from Britain in 1965. More stringent government regulation of immigration in the period 1970–1980 slowed it significantly. The birth rate of the Singapore-born also decreased during the 1980s and 1990s, especially amongst the ethnic Chinese. Successive government strategies to increase it have failed. For this reason, immigration has been the only means to achieve a significant-enough population increase to maintain a steady supply of labor and sustain the desired levels of economic development.

In the US and elsewhere, housing costs are a major reason given for why couples aren’t having children, or aren’t having enough children to replace the earlier generation. Housing is thus an important starting point in Singapore, which has fascinating distinctions of who has access to what based on their citizenship status.

Let me explain this status thing before diving into housing. I couldn’t find statistics of “status” by ethnic mix easily (maybe friends living and working in Singapore can help me out), but here is the overall complicated picture of citizens, non-residents, permanent residents and more:

In Singapore, your status really matters for access to affordable housing, and housing is a limiting factor when it comes to decisions about how many children to have. My husband has always wanted more children (we have two) and I constantly remind him of our space constraints (and the nightmarish first 6 months with twins.) [If you want a fun digression: I also chuckle at this study with a catchy title, “Car seats as contraception” that basically says that given laws in the US on child safety seats, most cars can’t fit more than 2 car seats in the back, and that’s the limiting factor on couples having a third child.] On one hand, high housing costs may suppress fertility rates, while on the other, in a place like Singapore, a large supply of maids (captured in the 16% domestic workers above), has been attributed to increasing female labor force participation, particularly postpartum.]

The Government’s Housing and Development Board was established in the 1940s in part to create hygienic apartments/living conditions for the country, which after WWII faced massive overcrowding in dilapidated, unhygienic slums and squatter settlements. Not the Singapore you think of now, right? About 80% of all the population lives in public housing owned by the HDB (if you have time, read the article linked because it gives you a sense of how thoughtful this vertical urban planning really was.) These are coveted, subsidized 99-year leases that are mostly available only for Singaporean citizens and PRs. Access is not uniform, but it is transparent: In a nutshell, Singaporean citizens are given the highest priority in accessing public housing. They have full access to subsidized public housing (HDB) and virtually all private property, including landed houses. The next tier is the Permanent Resident (PR), who can buy resale public housing (after a 3-year wait period for households) but faces higher taxes and restrictions on landed property. Finally, the Non-Residents are generally limited to the private housing market and subject to the highest tax rates.

Now the most fascinating part: To prevent the formation of racial enclaves, the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) mandates specific ethnic proportions in every HDB block and neighborhood, forcing a demographic mix that reflects the national average of Chinese, Malay, and Indian/Other residents, in a quest to promote “social harmony”. While effective at preventing segregation, the EIP can create financial hurdles for minority sellers, leading the government to introduce a buyback scheme in 2022 to assist those unable to find buyers due to quota restrictions. (you can read more critiques (resentment and more) here and here.) The figure below shows this in stark detail - a direct relationship between a quota being maxed out and the selling price of the flat.

Source: The Kontinentalist

It’s interesting to view marriage trends knowing about these housing quotas. I would imagine in a country where ethnic harmony is state sanctioned, the ultimate test for this would be in seeing the numbers of inter-racial marriages rising over time. However, in Singapore, inter-ethnic marriages have been stable for the last 10 years (hovering around 17-19%) and “trans-national” marriages (i.e. between citizens and non-citizens) at 37%. Is citizenship/housing a major consideration in modern dating?

A minister recently stated, “But immigration can only go as far as integration allows,” understanding that immigration is critical to keep its society and economy dynamic, but that integration (including marital?) is of utmost importance. Singapore is a country of hard limits: limited land, state-controlled housing, and a fertility rate in freefall. When you add strictly managed immigration and rigid ethnic quotas to that mix, the state is no longer just a landlord - it is the architect of a fragile social chemistry.

Military Strength and Innovation

I am no expert in military studies, so I am ready to be informed if I am over-interpreting what I am reading. That said, there are 2 things that are really striking about Singapore in this regard, which make a lot of sense to me when you bring in the urbanization/demography lens. First - with a swiftly aging population, Singapore faces the dilemma of having a dwindling pool of recruits in an already small pond, navigating serious disputes in the South China Sea (I think I have worn out my water-related metaphors now). Second - The very urban density that fueled Singapore’s economic rise has now created a structural limit on its traditional military scale, necessitating a transition from a labor-intensive force to a technology-centric power.

Data from the US suggests that rural young people are more likely to enlist in the military than their urban peers, and there is a higher rate of rural residence among veterans. If we assume this is true elsewhere, then what to make of Singapore with its (by design) city dwellers? To start with, they have mandatory 2-year national conscription for males above age 18 who are citizens or second-generation PRs. With the population above age 65 at 14% today jumping to 27% in 2050, you can see where this is going. By my calculation, in 2050 there will be about 2.7M men above age 18. Given the breakdown of how many male citizens and PRs there are, it still does not add up to the manpower I imagine would be required to have a large military presence, given tensions in the neighborhood. But! Singapore actually boasts one of the highest ratios of military personnel per capita (third only to North Korea and Eritrea). It does this not only with the mandatory military service, but also with a ten-year cycle of reservist training. This system creates a high-readiness force where the active personnel—approximately 51,000—are supplemented by a massive pool of over 252,500 Operationally Ready National Servicemen (NSmen) who can be mobilized within hours.

Singapore is one of the most advanced and well-equipped militaries in SE Asia. It has consistently spent around 3% of GDP on defense for decades, higher than its neighbors. It also ranks rather high on the Global Firepower Index (29 out of 145) with categories ranging from quantity of military units to logistical capabilities. One of the directions of spending is in tech-forward, AI enabled innovations. Singapore is driving defense innovation by leveraging technology as a critical force multiplier to overcome its demographic and geographical constraints, focusing on a strategy that integrates advanced software, robotics, and institutional agility. The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) are also prioritizing autonomous systems to increase operational mass without increasing manpower. This technical evolution is underpinned by a unique model that pairs engineers with soldiers to rapidly deploy agile solutions, alongside a commitment to international collaboration with a resilient “Digital Defence” pillar to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty in an increasingly volatile global landscape.

The Highlands and High-Rises

Looking back at Papua New Guinea and then to Singapore, we see the two extreme poles of the demographic transition with respect to the urban/rura continuum.

In PNG, we saw a country grappling with the youth bulge of a rural society—a vast, energetic population that the economy is struggling to absorb. In Singapore, we see the opposite. Here, the very density and economic success that built a global hub have created a society so efficient and specialized that it struggles to replace itself.

Singapore’s response—strict immigration controls and housing quotas to force social harmony, and AI to replace soldiers—is a bold experiment in statecraft. It suggests that in an urbanized future, the state doesn’t just manage the population; it has to architect it. Whether you are looking at the highlands of PNG or the skyscrapers of Singapore, it seems that demography isn’t just about numbers; it’s about the very survival of a culture’s identity.

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The Food!

We made the most delicious Singapore Chilli Crab - the kids said it was a 100/10 and everyone had both hands in digging and slurping for about 2 hours. The recipe was so good that Eymir asked me to gatekeep it from the blog, and I had to remind him that I actually found it online myself :) We had (store-bought) mantou on the side, and Ekim continued his tradition of making a lovely salad. We struggled to find music we all liked, but ended up settling on Alyph (although we couldnt hear much over said loud slurping.)