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Singaporeans are to be given more tax breaks, cash payouts and parental leave in order to encourage them to have children. These benefits just are a few of the measures starting 1 January 2009 that hopes to revive Singapore's declining birth rate. Total birth rate in the Republic was just 1.29 last year.
Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng led a high level working group over the last 18 months tasked with developing the Marriage and Parenthood Package, which would entail working on further research and developing more employee benefit technology to ensure the measures are implemented effectively.
The government is shelling out S$600 million to improve existing tax benefits. These include Qualifying Child Relief (Disabled Child Relief), Working Mother's Child Relief and the Parenthood Tax Rebate. Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said: "We are effectively making a shift in our tax system towards further cut in taxes that favours those with families.” He added: "It's a significant cut because for most taxpaying families, if you have two kids or more, this amounts to 50 to 100 per cent reduction in the taxes you pay for the first 10 years of the child's life."
Paid maternity leave will be extended from 12 to 16 weeks, of which the last eight weeks can be taken flexibly, for the year following the date of pregnancy. It will be incumbent on employers to develop strong benefits communication so that employees are fully aware of the new changes.
Each parent will also be entitled to six days paid childcare leave a year if their child is below the age of seven. Their employers will fund the first three days and the other half paid for by the government. Parents of children under two years old can each take up to six days of unpaid infant care leave. These measures will cost the government about S$300 million.
However, the city state is not ready to introduce paternity leave yet. Wong Kan Seng, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister In Charge of Population Matters, said: "When we studied other countries with paternity leave, like the Scandinavian countries, we found the majority of them don't take it."
The ministerial panel said that it would revisit paternity leave in future. S$400 million will be set aside for the Baby Bonus scheme, a grant given to parents. Improvements include increasing the cash gift from S$3,000 to S$4,000 for the first and second child. Last year the government awarded S$220 million worth of Baby Bonuses.
Subsidies will also almost double for child and infant care. Working mothers can expect subsidies of S$300 or S$600 a month for full day care, while nonworking mothers will get S$150. More details are available on Singapore's Marriage and Parenthood website.
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