Highlights

In Singapore, we choose ministers on the basis of their high competence – and then pray they also become good politicians. In other countries, they choose ministers on the basis of their political skills – and then pray, usually in vain, that they turn out to be competent ministers. So socialised are we to the […]

Singapore’s support system for young families incentivises the nuclear household. This undervalues critical multigenerational care. “It takes a village to raise a child”, we’re told. But when you look at how our housing, childcare, and household benefits are structured, the village Singapore imagines is one where everyone unhelpfully lives in separate flats. Measures such as […]

SINGAPORE: The latest General Household Survey (GHS) offers a nuanced picture of marriage and family life in Singapore. At first glance, the statistics appear contradictory. More young adults remain single well into their thirties than five years ago, while completed fertility among married women continues to decline. Yet by their 40s, the overwhelming majority of […]

Singapore is good at delivering services to communities. It is far less practised at letting communities organise for themselves — and it has never built the institution for that purpose. A child is falling behind in school. If the family can afford it, they pay for private tuition. If they cannot, a self-help group or a social service […]

SINGAPORE: For the first time, married couples living with children make up less than half of Singapore’s households. The finding, from the latest General Household Survey released on Jun 30, sits alongside two others: More young residents are staying single and families are getting smaller. These shifts, usually discussed through the lenses of marriage, fertility and ageing, can […]

SINGAPORE: Before the consensus conference on local-foreign integration even started, a participant sent us an email. He wanted the Institute of Policy Studies’ research team to know what to expect: He wrote that he intended to be vocal. That he was angry and frustrated. That he wanted to voice his concerns about citizens being neglected, about job […]

Held on 9 March 2026, the first lecture of the 18th IPS-Nathan Lecture Series, titled “Singapore, Biodiversity and a Thriving City”, was delivered by Dr Shawn Lum, Senior Lecturer at the Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University. The lecture explored Singapore’s environmental transformation, the science of biodiversity conservation, and the social attitudes that […]

In his final IPS-Nathan Lecture, Mr Piyush Gupta, former Chief Executive Officer and Director of DBS Group, turned his attention to Singapore’s financial future. He argued that a new wave of change is underway, driven by blockchain, which has given rise to new financial infrastructures and new forms of digital money, and agentic artificial intelligence […]

SINGAPORE: In Singapore, much has been said about the need to break away from an education “arms race”. This was reiterated by Education Minister Desmond Lee in parliament this month, when he cautioned that a fixation on grades can pit children against one another, diminish their joy of learning and crowd out character-building. Mr Lee’s […]

Recently, at the Festival of Innovation organised by GovInsider here, the question was posed: What difference would it make if women had a greater part in designing and running the digital systems that govern our lives? The answer: That infrastructure would be centred around the principles of empathy, agency and resilience, and recognise that relationships […]