Population control in Singapore

Population planning in Singapore spans two distinct phases: first to slow and reverse the boom in births that started after World War II; and then, from the 1980s onwards, to encourage parents to have more children because birth numbers had fallen below replacement levels. Government eugenics policies favoured both phases. In 1960s and 1970s, the antinatalist policies flourished. The Family Planning and Population Board (FPPB) was established, initially advocating small families but eventually running the Stop at Two programme, which pushed for small two-children families and promoted sterilisation. From 1969 it was also used by government leaders to target lowly educated and low-income women in an experiment with eugenics policies to solve social concerns.

Government leaders also announced the Graduate Mothers' Scheme in 1984, which favoured the children of mothers with a university degree in primary school placement and registration process over the lesser-educated. After the outcry in the 1984 general elections it was eventually scrapped.

Singapore had also been undergoing the demographic transition and birth rates had fallen precipitously. The government eventually became pro-natalist, and officially announced its replacement Have Three or More (if you can afford it) in 1987, in which the government continued its efforts to better the quality and quantity of the population while discouraging low-income families from having children. The Social Development Unit (SDU) was also established in 1984 to promote marriage and romance between educated individuals.

Different sources have offered differing judgments on the government policies' impact on the population structure of Singapore. While Stop at Two has been described as basically successful or "over-successful", sceptics of interventionism claim that the demographic transition would have occurred anyway – noting that the government's attempts at reversing the falling birth rates due to the demographic transition have been less than successful.

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