$Unique_ID{COW03168}
$Pretitle{384}
$Title{Singapore
Chapter 4B.   Social Change and the Individual}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Nena Vreeland}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{social
family
percent
economic
housing
income
mobility
population
community
hdb}
$Date{1976}
$Log{}
Country:     Singapore
Book:        Singapore, A Country Study
Author:      Nena Vreeland
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1976

Chapter 4B.   Social Change and the Individual

     Accompanying the social and economic transformation that has taken place
in Singapore since the mid-1960s have been changes in occupational structure,
income distribution, and residence patterns. These have all affected the
social relations of the individual with his family and neighbors and his
perception of himself, his values, and his expectations.

     The growth of the manufacturing sector of the economy has changed the
composition of the labor force. Self-employed entrepreneurs have given way to
factor production workers, as shown in the continuing increase in the latter
occupations as a proportion of the labor force, the declining proportion of
self-employed persons, and the growing proportion of employees (see ch. 2).
Industrialization has thus served to break down the traditional lines of
economic specialization among and within ethnic groups. Economist Pang Eng
Fong observes that

these occupational and industrial concentrations along ethnic or dialect lines
are gradually being eroded by the spread of education and the process of
industrialization which has created new organizations and a demand for new
skills and occupations. Further, the strong tendencies of existing firms to
hire on particularistic criteria have been tempered by the influx of foreign
companies, and the increasing use of educational credentials as a screening
device.

     Not only have the traditional economic roles of different groups been
breaking down, but the nepotism that supported those divisions is being
replaced with a meritocratic system in which education has become a route of
upward mobility. This change is also reflected in the increasing educational
level of the labor force; in 1974 over 28 percent of employed persons had at
least a secondary school certificate. Another result of the growth of the
manufacturing sector has been increased employment of women; female labor
force participation rates increased from 24.6 per 100 population in 1970 to
29.6 in 1975.

     Chinese and Malays have tended to benefit more from industrialization
than have Indians, largely because Indians have remained in their occupations
in trading and the professions. The largest proportion of self-employed and
unpaid family workers, such as entrepreneurs and hawkers, has remained among
the Chinese.

     The industrialization process has been partly responsible for changes in
income distribution within the population. Although increases in individual
and household income have not kept pace with growth in the gross domestic
product (GDP-see Glossary) and inflation has more than eaten up gains in wages
in the early 1970s-the price, according to Lee, that Singapore must pay for
economic growth-the distribution of income throughout the society has become
much more nearly equal. Pang has characterized the shift in income
distribution between 1966 and 1973 as "a massive increase in the number and
proportion of middle-income earners." Over 43 percent of individuals earned
less than S$150 (for value of the Singapore dollar-see Glossary) monthly in
1963 compared with slightly more than 25 percent in 1973. An analysis of
quintile shares-that is, what proportion of total income was received by each
fifth of the population-shows that the wealthiest fifth reduced its share of
total income by 5 percent to the benefit of all others, especially the third
and fourth wealthiest fifths of the population. In 1973 the middle third of
the population was earning 24.5 percent of all income-a far larger share than
is usually the case in a developing nation. Greater equity in income
distribution, however, has not necessarily meant an increase in real income.
Inflation in the 1973-75 period actually reduced the mean income of all wage
earners in real dollars.

     The poorest segments of the population have increased their share of the
total income much more slowly, and in 1973 the poorest fifth of the population
received only 5 percent of total income. But, unlike most countries in the
process of national economic development and industrialization, in Singapore
it has not been a matter of the rich getting richer and the poor getting
poorer. The burden of inflation on the poorer segments of society has been
partly offset by government provision of low-cost housing, health care,
education, and other social services, thus considerably reducing the greatest
drain on poor and middle-class household expenditures.

     Even more than economic changes the movement of one-half of the
population into public housing in a fifteen-year period has had an impact on
the social organization and the values of the people. Traditional community
structures and institutions and, according to some observers, the nature of
family relations as well have changed as a result of these conditions.
Singaporean social scientists are divided among themselves as to the true
impact of HDB housing and increased occupational mobility on family
structures. All agree that the nuclear family has become the basic family unit
among HDB apartment dwellers rather than the multigeneration extended family
traditional in Chinese and Indian social organization. But some observers,
such as Roy Nyce, maintain that for Singaporean Chinese and Indians the
extended family as the basic unit of residence and authority was more often an
unrealized ideal than a reality. He points out that, because Singapore's
population was created as much by immigration as by natural increase, many
young people have never even seen their grandparents, who were either dead or
still in China or India, much less lived with them in an extended family unit,
and he further suggests that the nuclear family had already become the
predominant pattern in the 1950s. Extended family living, to whatever extent
it may have existed, was largely a concomitant of family-owned and -operated
businesses and, as they have declined with economic change, so probably has
the extended family.

     Other observers have questioned the extent to which movement into the
single-family units of HDB housing and the greater independence of young
people has changed loyalty to the extended family. Stephen H. K. Yeh, an
authority on the sociology of HDB tenants, has flatly asserted that "public
housing so far has no significant effect in the reduction of households with
larger size and more complex structure." Ann Wee has observed that, although
extended families may no longer function as residential units, they tend to
retain an identity as a social unit by living in separate but proximal housing
units and by sharing meals and a common food budget. She suggests that this is
done not so much from a desire to economize on food costs as from a desire to
preserve extended family ties.

     Moreover children tend to stay in the parental home until marriage, even
though this has increasingly come to mean the mid-twenties for most, when all
but a few have finished their educations and are economically independent.
This is thought to have a significant economic impact, since the addition of
children's incomes enables many families to purchase luxuries and consumer
durables, but perhaps an additional effect is raising the material
expectations of young people. It can be argued that the pattern of remaining
in the parental home is primarily a result of Singapore's chronic housing
shortage. But the alternative explanation, that children stay at home out of a
desire to preserve a close relationship with their parents and siblings,
cannot be automatically discounted; it is further supported by the general
tendency among young people to reserve their weekends for visits with their
families. Several observers have noted that relations within the nuclear
family tend to become more intimate when families move into HDB flats and that
relations between parents and children and between husbands and wives become
less authoritarian.

     All observers agree, however, that the changes in residence
patterns-changes planned to continue until at least 80 percent of the
population is living in public housing and most others are living in privately
owned apartments-have had a destructive effect on traditional patterns of
community relations and traditional community institutions. Although neighbors
in the HDB estates generally get along well, there appears to be little sense
of community within the buildings. The "open-door policy" of the old ethnic
neighborhoods and the neighborly, if squalid, atmosphere of the old
shophouse districts seem to have given way to self-contained apartments with
locked doors. The traditional places for socializing-at a communal water tap
or in the market-are absent in housing developments with piped-in water and
refrigerators that make daily marketing unnecessary. Moreover women, who
generally create and maintain social ties with neighbors, are more frequently
away at jobs and have fewer opportunities to make such ties.

     Nyce asserts that living in HDB apartments "has destroyed almost all
community life that existed before and has not yet put anything in its place."
Malays, in particular, seem to have suffered social dislocation from the move.
Although the nuclear family is the traditional basic unit of Malay kinship
organization-and the move to HDB housing has had little effect in that
respect-Malay community organizations depend heavily on easy access between
households and on a variety of common meetingplaces for socializing. This may
help to explain the apparent reluctance of Malays to move into HDB housing as
well as their very frequent use of community center facilities. But these
problems are familiar to most urban industrialized societies, and it should be
noted that the majority of HDB tenants register high approval of their new
housing arrangements.

     Economic and social changes have also affected individual values and
attitudes. Almost all observers agree that there has been an increased value
placed on independence and privacy. Parents rely more on the schools for
socializing and disciplining their children, apparently content with the
values they are being taught-a trend that has accelerated as mothers have
joined the work force and are no longer at home with their children. Riaz
Hassan identifies a complex of values attendant on new patterns of urban
living, characterized by "receptiveness to change, achievement, materialism,
individualism, aspiration for social mobility, economic rationality, and
acquisitiveness" and warns that "people in the new high-density, high-rise
public housing communities tend to withdraw into a private world, thereby
creating a special environment which is characterized by...impersonality,
individualism, apathy, and a sense of general insecurity." The newfound
freedom and independence in a growing economy are accompanied by greater
feelings of responsibility, emotional strains, and tensions created by the
insecurities of life in a mobile society that has lost its traditional
institutional supports. These tensions produce great strains on the nuclear
family, which is often unable to bear them alone: divorce rates in Singapore
increased over 380 percent in the 1960s. Relations between employers and
employees have also tended to become more impersonal, and workers feel less
involved in their work; the turnover rate is as high as 50 percent in some
factories.

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY

     The nature of the changing occupational and income distribution
structure indicates that what was formerly a two-class system has, by
providing sufficient means of upward mobility in an expanding economy, been
transformed into a three-class system having a vital and growing middle
sector. Moreover individual Singaporeans tended to perceive themselves as
occupying a somewhat higher class than an objective evaluation of their status
would confirm.

     The criteria by which different Singaporeans determine the social class
of their fellow citizens reveal a great deal about the values important to
each ethnic community. Among all Singaporeans wealth and education are of
roughly equal importance in determining social status; occupational status,
social position (influence and standing in the community), and personal
qualities are ranked in descending order as the less important criteria. Very
few consider race an important consideration. Among Chinese, however,
education is considered most important, followed by wealth, occupation,
personal qualities, and social position. Malays, by contrast, place by far the
greatest importance on wealth and less on education, occupational status, and
social position. Unlike other Singaporeans, some Malays do feel that ethnic
origin plays a role in determining social status, perhaps reflecting the
"special position" accorded to Malays under British rule and in Malaysia. More
than any other group, Indians value educational attainment as a status
criterion, followed by wealth, social position, and occupational status. These
preferences are in concert with a modern industrializing society in which
status is accorded more by achievement than by ascription. Wealth is the
emblem of achievement, education a gateway to upward mobility, and occupation
a means of acquiring wealth and demonstrating educational attainment.

     All classes and ethnic groups consider education the most important means
of upward social mobility, as evidenced by the qualifications required for the
ten most prestigious occupations: university professor, physician, government
minister, scientist, top-level bureaucrat, company director, banker, lawyer,
member of Parliament, and teacher. Expectations of young Singaporeans of
moving up to secure white-collar jobs has resulted in an almost uniform choice
among secondary school students for academic rather than technical or
vocational training. Not only has this led to large numbers of graduates with
white-collar aspirations who have had to settle for blue-collar jobs, but it
has also led to a severe shortage of Singaporeans trained for technical and
vocational careers (see ch. 2).

     These same status criteria and career preferences are reflected in the
changing composition of the nation's elite. The business elite, once able to
exercise considerable influence in the community and with colonial
authorities, has been replaced at the apex of society by a power elite of
highly educated political leaders and bureaucrats (see ch. 6). Peter S. J.
Chen identifies a "lower elite" composed of "labour leaders, corporation
presidents, members of Parliament, professionals, and the like" and a power
elite drawn mostly from among the most talented "professionals, intellectuals,
and trade union leaders but "augmented by a rising group of "newly emerging
civil bureaucrats [who] include the permanent secretaries, chairmen and
directors of statutory boards and other top civil servants." Chen attributes
the rise of this group to the emasculation of earlier pressure groups by the
establishment of one-party rule in Singapore and to the post-1965 emphasis on
economic development and the creation of a welfare state in which politicians,
technocrats, and civil servants have played such a crucial role.

     The trend toward greater social mobility and a broadening of the middle
segment of the class structure apparent by the late 1960s received its
greatest impetus from the diversification of occupations requiring new skills
and presenting new opportunities to the labor force. Nonetheless mobility
through educational attainment, which has remained by far the greatest means
of improvement for the individual, is extremely competitive, and high
qualifications are held by a relatively small segment of the population.
According to the 1970 census roughly 25 percent of the population had never
attended school, and 43 percent had gone only as far as the sixth grade. Less
than 10 percent of the population over six years old had finished secondary
school, and 1 percent had college degrees. Until 1975 students in the sixth
grade had to pass an examination in order to attend secondary schools, and a
high proportion-46 percent in 1968-failed to do so. These proportions are
likely to have changed since then, given the increase in secondary school
enrollments. Nevertheless the increasing emphasis among employers on objective
educational attainment-what one Singaporean observer calls the elevation of
"meritocracy to the level of a state religion"-means that those who fail to do
well in the lower school grades will be quickly and almost irrevocably
excluded from upward occupational and social mobility, notably to those
positions from which new recruits into the elite are drawn. The alternative
of technical and vocational education-increasingly emphasized by the
government as the availability of white-collar jobs declines-is still regarded
as leading to low-paying, low-status positions.

     Some data seem to suggest that downward social mobility is perhaps as
common as upward social mobility but, whether or not that is the case, many
Singaporeans seemed to feel that their position in life was improving. This
was more true of Chinese and Malays than of Indians and most true of
English-educated persons regardless of race. Relatively few felt that their
lives had changed for the worse. Expectations for upward social mobility and
material advancement are high, although most would choose job security over
high pay; the nation's leadership and economic resources may find it difficult
if not impossible ultimately to meet these expectations.

                                    * * *

     Readers interested in a more comprehensive and detailed account of
Singapore's Indian community than is found in this chapter are referred to
Sinnappah Arasaratnam's work on the subject. Those wishing more information on
the role of religion in contemporary Singapore society are referred to Roy
Nyce's pamphlet The Kingdom and the Country. The author of this chapter found
the works of John A. MacDougall and Peter A. Busch, Peter S. J. Chen, and Pang
Eng Fong especially useful on the respective subjects of national
integration, social stratification and change, and economic and occupational
change. (For further information see Bibliography.)