Keeping Singapore young – The IPS report Lee Kuan Yew referred to

~by: Jewel Philemon~

On 6 September 2011, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, speaking at the annual Ministerial Forum series organised by the NTU Students’ Union said that there were “grim statistics” from the Institute of Policy Studies stating that 60,000 migrants were needed a year to keep Singapore’s economy young (see HERE),

When he made that comment he was referring to Institute of Policy Studies’ (IPS) project (embarked on 2007) to study the scenarios of future population growth and change for Singapore.

IPS released a report of the project today which highlights some of the project’s findings. Two questions are examined in this report:

1. What will the future population of Singapore look like if the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) remains extremely low over the long term; and
2. What will be the likely effects of raising the TFR versus increasing immigration on the future population of Singapore?

The report by IPS assumes several scenarios in trying to answer these questions. And one of the scenarios assumed says that if Total Fertility Rate remains at 1.24 births per woman and 30,000 net migrants are added annually throughout the projection period (Constant Low Fertility, Low Migration), the number of the young in 2050 will only be slightly lower than the young in 2005 (about 650,000).

The report and the project findings are here:

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Download the report and findings HERE.