Comments by "Zhi Han Lee" (@lzh4950) on "Why Taiwanese Aren’t Making Babies" video.

I'm in Singapore & that reminds me of a news article about a mother of 3 young children who faced challenges taking public transport e.g. prams had to be folded before boarding a bus, (until 2017). In response my father said it was irresponsible for that mother to have that many children if she couldn't afford a car (which are heavily taxed here), perhaps exemplifying some of the more conservative attitudes present in the region
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Singapore has a lot of public housing (housing 85% of the population, & ~1/4 to 1/2 the cost of private housing), so housing cost is probably a smaller issue here than elsewhere. Economic competition might be a bigger issue I guess, with many of my fresh grad friends often working late at night, which I don't think will be sustainable once we have children. I also recall our prime minister had been more dismissive towards work-life balance also, by saying that immigrants from less developed countries were less demanding
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Singapore's way of promoting marriage is to give married people significantly more priority in buying public housing, which is significant since private housing is like 2-4x the cost & since parents don't really bequeath their properties to their children for them to start their own families when they grow up (it's seen as spoiling the child to do that, & also most houses here are bought on land that has only 99-year leases (i.e. when that is up the government can legally acquire the property for free))
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Day/child care has increased a lot in Singapore too, now ~S$1000 monthly/child, while ~20 years ago it was more like ~$250, though I think there are some government schemes present to help defray some costs. Milk powder is also expensive here (S$50-80/tin) to the extent that the government had setup a task force to look into the matter
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Might be a more pressing issue in Singapore as it's birth rate is declining while it's population continues to rise (due to immigration), meaning there'll be less people to defend more people (in my JC/high school's CCA/club for instance, I was the only one who served conscription), unless we attract more immigrants to take up citizenship/PR here
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13:35 Am reminded that Singapore's 2013 Population White Paper was controversial as it was planning for a population of up to 7m, so people feared overcrowding. The opposition political party proposed a 6m population instead but our prime minister dismissed that as 'irresponsible'. Meanwhile I also saw some one write in the newspaper: "Is the Singaporean life supposed to be easy?" Can't fathom comments like this being politically survivable in, say, Taiwan/ROC
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@90taetaeya Malays as a proportion of Singapore's population might increase over time as their birth rate is highest among the main ethnic groups here (with a TFR of close to 2, as opposed to a TFR close to 1 among the Chinese)
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