Relationship between Fertility Rate & Housing Price in Singapore

ECONS 643: Real Estate & Financial Cycles

Executive Summary
 2015 is the year of SG 501 which will see many celebratory events happening throughout the
year to commemorate Singapore’s 50th year of independence and nation-building. In the short span
of just 50 years, since the small little red dot first gained independence in 1965, we have today
collected many enviable accolades and achievements under our belt, such as 1) becoming the third
richest country in the world 2, 2) being ranked as the most liveable city 3 in Asia and the world for
expatriates and 3) boosting of having one of the higher home ownership rates 4 for its citizens at
more than 90%. However, it is also observed that Singapore’s rapid economic success 5 have also
meant that such unbridled growth have led to certain unwelcome trade-offs that comes along with
it, such as being unceremoniously proclaimed also as the world’s most expensive city to live in 6 and
also, amongst the developed nations, holding the unflattering title for one of the world’s lowest total
fertility rate (TFR)7 .

The promise to provide affordable housing has always been an important tenet of the social
compact the government has drawn up with the electorate as it is cognizant of the negative
implications if such a promise is not being fulfilled, especially with respect to the impact on the TFR.
The local’s consistently low TFR is a key national issue that has been widely acknowledged to have
eluded and defeated the authorities’ much admired social engineering prowess. An example would
be the Marriage and Parenthood Package Measures introduced by the government in 2001 to “To
help Singaporeans achieve their dreams to marry and have children” in which various economic
incentives (cash incentive, housing schemes, tax reliefs/subsidies etc) are dangled in front of locals
to urge them to get their groove going. However, looking now at a downward trending TFR, it does
not seem that the programme works well.

Hence for this paper, we will attempt to examine existing literature explaining the
relationship between housing price and TFR, not just for the Eastern Asian region, which collectively
have very low TFRs but in particular for the Singapore context. I will then give the reader a short
summary of the existing measures put in by the authorities in their attempt to encourage baby-
making through the transmission effect via the housing market and lastly, I will end off by presenting
an alternative proposal on the feasibility of tweaking current policies to encourage better
responsiveness for increase of TFR.

1
A programme launched by the Singapore Government to invite the community to organise inclusive and meaningful initiatives that allows Singaporeans to
celebrate 50 years of nation building. https://www.singapore50.sg. Retrieved 6 March 2015
2
Straits Times: S'pore is 3rd-richest country: http://www.mfa.gov.sg/content/mfa/media_centre/singapore_headlines/2012/201202/news_20120226.html
3
Singapore 'most liveable city in the world' for expatriates: Index http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-most-liveable/1609050.html .
Retrieved 6 March 2015
4
Home ownership: ratio of owner-occupied units to total residential units in a specified area
5
Singapore's Success : Engineering Economic Growth (Henri Ghesquiere)
6
Singapore still world's most expensive city, says EIU http://www.straitstimes.com/news/business/economy/story/singapore-still-worlds-most-expensive-
city-says-eiu-20150303 . Retrieved 6 March 2015
7
Demography and family http://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/ips/research/demography-and-family Retrieved 6 March 2015
Existing Literature on relationship between Housing Price and TFR.

According to existing literature (Becker 1960; Sander 1992; Kalwij 2000), TFR will drop with
the increase in income per capita, an increase in female’s labour force participation, and an increase
of the number of years for female education. This is as the time and effort taken to raise up a child is
depicted as the opportunity cost for females to accumulate potential income earnings. E.g., if the
female is at home raising a kid (time cost), she typically will not be able to secure paid employment,
(unless she sends her child to a day care centre or there are alternative arrangement to taking care
of them, e.g. grandparents) Hence, If the educational level of female does increase or there is an
increase in the female labour force participation rate, their potential income will also increase; and
as their potential income is raised, the “cost of fertility” is raised as well. In addition, with reference
from a recent Straits Times article, the recent estimate for the lifetime cost of raising a child from
infant through to university is at around $900,000 8. Hence if we look at TFR as a form of normal
goods, e.g. “the demand of children”, when the price/cost of children goes up, with there will be
naturally be less quantity demand for children, hence there will be a drop in TFR.

However, there have recently been some new research which proposed that housing price
may also affect TFR as well. The basic idea is that the purchase of a house will simultaneously
competes for the resources required for childbearing. In this respect, TFR depends on the income
and substitution effect for “demand of children”. The income effect was illustrated in the first
paragraph whereas for the substitution effect, it means that any changes made in the price of
consumer goods will also impact the shadow price for childbearing and other durable consumer
goods. Purchase of real estate, in particular, takes up a significant part of the family expenditure,
especially for the lower income household.

Housing price can thus affect a family’s childbearing plan through two channels. The first is
the ‘housing price constraint’. Since both house purchase and raising children are resources that are
expended for a family, when income is allocated between them, the increase in house price will
crowd out the need for effort spending to raise children, which will reduce the household’s
willingness and capacity to take on childbearing responsibility.

The second channel is through what is known as the ‘housing area constraint’ that was
earlier proposed by Professor D Gale Johnson (1999). To have more children, a family needs larger
housing space. This is not only because more people need more bedrooms but also because children
need playing around spaces. High housing price reduces the size of house and can lowers the
8
The $900,000 Singapore child. http://www.cpf.gov.sg/imsavvy/infohub_article.asp?readid={891993905-16153-6409876345}. Retrieved 6 March 2015
number of children desired by a family. Yi and Xingjian (2008) found TFR decreased 0.45%
significantly for every 1% increase of house price indicator in Hong Kong. Dettling and Kearney
(2011) discovered that an increase in the housing price for the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)-
level will increase the fertility rate of existing homeowners but decreased the birth desire of
potential first-time homeowners. The researchers found out that housing is a major cost associated
with child rearing for potential first-time homeowners while existing homeowners can use some of
their increased housing wealth that is transmitted through increase in housing prices, to fund their
aggregate consumption or plans for raising up children.

That however is just for the context of the overseas housing market. For the Singapore
market, through the research work of (Phang, 2004), it has been empirically demonstrated that the
increase of housing price does not have bear any significant positive effect on aggregate
consumption via the wealth effect nor lead to any further plans for childbearing. This runs contrary
to the findings for the OECD countries which postulates that that an increase in housing price will
lead to an increase in housing wealth, an increase in aggregate consumption level and possibly an
increase in TFR as well, due to an increase in available resources. For Singapore, this may be
attributable to institutional factors: it is not as easy for households to withdraw housing equity to
finance consumption as equity in public housing are being “locked in” and public housing makes up
an estimated 80% of the entire real estate market taken on by residents. Mortgage equity
withdrawal in Singapore is limited by restrictions imposed by the Housing and Development Board
(HDB) as well as the Central Provident Fund Board (CPF) who does not allow any refinancing of HDB
flats. (Phang, 2001). Even when there is an increase in housing price, the HDB housing equity can
only be withdrawn for purpose of consumption is e.g. when the owner decides to move house, sell
away their current flat and take on a new mortgage loan for a smaller unit, an option that comes
with it significant transaction costs that can erode away the equity brought about by increase of the
housing price.

For this paper, we will attempt to examine the relationship between the housing price index
and fertility rate on a yearly basis. Raw data source from the HDB resale index 9 will be used, as the
majority of Singaporeans primarily reside in such public housing system, i.e. more than eighty per
cent of Singaporeans and since HDB resale prices have closely followed private residential prices in
the past, their trends will be fairly similar and a good representation of the overall real estate market
conditions. As the original data obtained first comes in a quarterly interval format, I will annualised

9
HDB Resale Price Index: http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10321p.nsf/w/BuyResaleFlatResaleIndex?OpenDocument. Retrieved 6 March 2015
the quarterly intervals and use the yearly average for the HDB resale price index for our analysis (25
year period)
HDB Resale Price HDB Resale Price Index Resident TFR
Year Resident TFR
Index (Annualised) (Annualised) % Change % Change
1990 24.6 1.83 0% 0%
1991 25.175 1.73 2% -5%
1992 27.45 1.72 9% -1%
1993 41.625 1.74 52% 1%
1994 52.875 1.71 27% -2%
1995 65.65 1.67 24% -2%
1996 91.7 1.66 40% -1%
1997 94.425 1.61 3% -3%
1998 76.8 1.48 -19% -8%
1999 75.325 1.47 -2% -1%
2000 78.25 1.60 (dragon year) 4% 9%
2001 71.375 1.41 -9% -12%
2002 69.525 1.37 -3% -3%
2003 73.225 1.27 5% -7%
2004 76.225 1.26 4% -1%
2005 74.35 1.26 -2% 0%
2006 74.25 1.28 0% 2%
2007 81.275 1.29 9% 1%
2008 96.725 1.28 19% -1%
2009 103.85 1.22 7% -5%
2010 118.6 1.15 14% -6%
2011 132.475 1.20 12% 4%
2012 142.15 1.29 (dragon year) 7% 8%
2013 147.975 1.19 4% -8%
2014 140.275 1.25 -5% -2%
Data Source for Residents’ TFR is derived from Singstat. Data source for HDB resale index is derived from HDB.

Using Eviews, I first transform the data to Log resident_Ltr and Log_resale_price_index. Then I derive
these three models:
1. Interpretation of regression table. For a 1% increase in HDB resale housing price index, the
resident TFR is predicted to decrease by 0.23%, with significant P value. Although we have a
high R-square value of 0.6, e.g. 60% of variability of movement for resident TFR can be
explained by HDB resale price index but we should be cautious not to trust model
completely as there are other meaningful variable that are not put in, e.g. years of female
education etc.
Dependent Variable: LGRESIDENT_TFR
Method: Least Squares
Date: 03/07/15 Time: 18:42
Sample (adjusted): 1 25
Included observations: 25 after adjustments

Variable Coefficient Std. Error t-Statistic Prob.  

C 1.355989 0.172286 7.870583 0.0000

LGHDB_RESALE_PRICE_INDEX -0.233720 0.039759 -5.878458 0.0000

R-squared 0.600391     Mean dependent var 0.349714

Adjusted R-squared 0.583017     S.D. dependent var 0.150892
S.E. of regression 0.097438     Akaike info criterion -1.742591
Sum squared resid 0.218364     Schwarz criterion -1.645081
Log likelihood 23.78239     Hannan-Quinn criter. -1.715546
F-statistic 34.55627     Durbin-Watson stat 0.451948
Prob(F-statistic) 0.000005
 2. Interpretation for Line and symbol graph chart. We can clearly see that there is negative
correlation relationship between HDB resale housing price index and the resident’s TFR

0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

LGHDB_RESALE_PRICE_INDEX
LGRESIDENT_TFR

3. Interpretation of Correlation Analysis table. Negative correlation between the two variables
and the strength is significantly strong at -0.775.

Covariance Analysis: Ordinary

Date: 03/07/15 Time: 18:44
Sample (adjusted): 1 25
Included observations: 25 after adjustments
Balanced sample (listwise missing value deletion)

Covariance
LGHDB_RESALE_PRICE
Correlation _INDEX  LGRESIDENT_TFR 
LGHDB_RESALE_PRICE_INDEX  0.240241
1.000000

LGRESIDENT_TFR  -0.056149 0.021858

-0.774849 1.000000

Looking at this simple model, we can infer that there is a negative relationship between
housing price and resident’s fertility rate. However, as I did not build a more robust model to put in
more explanatory variables, e.g. Female Labour Participation Rate (-), Race (Chinese tends to have
less babies), Years of female education (-), Income per capita (-), average number of hours spent at
work(-) , infant mortality rate (+) etc. , further research should be done to get a more comprehensive
finding. Also, it might be good to estimate the number of lagged periods before TFR is affected by
HDB resale price index. This is because although it generally takes 9 months for the baby to be
conceived, yet the process of acquiring a residential unit generally takes a lengthy deliberation
period, due to transaction and general search costs etc. Interestingly, 2014 saw a slight jump in TFR
to 1.25, which coincided with drop in HDB resale price index that started in 2012-2013 (slowing
growth), turning negative in 2014.
 Secondly, there may be a better way than just using HDB resale price index to explain the
movement of resident TFR as dependent variable. As this module is focused on the real estate
market, I would like to also introduce the reader to an alternative variable that can be a better
predictor of resident’s TFR. The hypothesis is that generally, if the increase in housing price is
proportionate to the increase of wages or income of the residents, all things being equal, that should
not lead to a decrease in the resident’s TFR. However, due to macroeconomic factors, there may be
times when there are excessive speculation in the real estate market during times of boom, causing
house price to climb steeply but the wages of workers may fail to follow with a respective increase.
Hence using “affordability of the housing unit” comes into the picture now.

In his Budget 2012 speech, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam (Deputy Prime Minister and
Minister for Finance) mentioned about how Singaporeans are “fortunate” and able to afford
purchasing a small flat, even with just $1,000 in household income 10. It then created a huge furore
within the local online community who was furiously indignant about the arrogant assumptions of
the authorities to think that there are no other out of pocket expenses to be incurred in the
purchase of a housing unit. Mr. Khaw Boon Wan (Minister for National Development) later then went
on to explain “that DPM Tharman was referring to the context of a two room “lego-sized” HDB flat where
the subsidised Build To Order price for such a unit in a recent launch is about $100,000, and if the head of
the household is a first-time buyer, he will be entitled to a total subsidy of $60,000 from the Additional
CPF Housing Grant and the Special CPF Housing Grant. Hence, the final selling price less subsidies will be
$40,000, with the monthly mortgage payment on such a HDB loan can be fully covered just from his CPF
contribution.”

Interestingly, a twitter #hashtag was started, with the meme #maybetharmanmeanttosay by the
online community, who generally observed that DPM Tharman’s assumption was over-simplistic as other
out of pocket expenses have not been counted as part of the equation, especially for the lower income
households that intended to get married and start a family. A humourous tweet by the infamous Mr.
Brown went: “Maybe Tharman meant to say, if you make $1k a month, you can buy a flat… bed
scanner”11 Hence, we could see from the online debacle that citizens seemed to have taken up arms over
the issue of affordability, not over what they viewed as excessive price increase in the housing market
then.

NUS economist Dr. Tilak Abeysinghe has also shared an academic perspective towards this
issue, pointedly on how Housing Affordability can possibility affect TFR. 12 The Household

10
Online uproar over DPM Tharman’s ‘$1k flat’ statement. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/online-uproar-over-dpm-tharman-1k-flat-
statement-132522414.html Retrieved 6 March 2015
11
1k can also buy flat. http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2012/03/tharman-1k-monthly-salary-can-buy-flat.html Retrieved 6 March 2015
12
Abeysinghe, T. (2011). Fewer children when house prices head north. The Straits Times. 1 September.
http://www.newshub.nus.edu.sg/news/1109/PDF/NORTH-st-1sep-pA38.pdf Retrieved 6 March 2015
Affordability Index (HAI), is NUS’s propriety measurement index that is derived from getting the ratio
of household income at age 30 of the household head to house price. Two ratios are being
computed.

- Housing is accessible if the accessibility ratio <=1.0.

- Housing is affordable if the affordability ratio <=0.3.
- An upward trend of these ratios indicates worsening housing accessibility and
affordability
The HAI also stands as a measure of relative income. Putting TFR & HAI side by side for
comparison, it is observed that TFR seems to have a close link with HAI from two years earlier, with
HAI lagged by two years. When housing affordability drops, TFR appears to also drop as well. This
may be a situation of having young couples wanting to ensure a roof over their heads first before
getting married and having children. Similarly, when there is a drop in HAI, couples may also have to
wait longer to secure a house, (search and transaction cost) which may come at the expense of
family size. A telling comment by Dr. Tilak states that “ it is possible sustaining housing affordability
may help at least in arresting the precipitous decline in the fertility rate.” which confirms our view
of the relationship not just between housing price, and TFR but more importantly the affordability &
TFR.

Fast forward to 2015, referring to below six charts that was churned out by the NUS research team
of Singapore Centre for Applied and Policy Economics:
The general findings the research team had was that:

(i) Main issue young HDB re-sale home buyers has with rising house prices is housing
accessibility, not so much long-run affordability. For example, a 4-room HDB re-sale flat in expensive
areas is inaccessible to income groups below the 30th percentile (Chart 1). Even the 2-room and 3-
room HDB apartments in low-priced areas like Yishun and Woodlands are inaccessible to low income
groups below the 20th percentile. At such a price range, the estimated savings by age 29 for low
income groups appear to be insufficient. Hence the issue of accessibility may be more severe than
what was expected by policy-makers.

(ii) Private residential properties are obviously meant for the very rich. Again accessibility is a
more severe problem than long-run affordability. It is particularly alarming that median priced
private apartments and condos have become inaccessible even for those in the 80th income
percentile group.

(iii) Lastly, rising mortgage rates (Chart 3, 4, 5 and 6) obviously lower long-run housing
affordability. Reduced housing affordability means reduced residual income for other living
expenses, which also means less resources to channel towards child-bearing activities.

Housing-related measures put in by the government to arrest decline of residents TFR.

To help Singaporeans achieve their dreams to marry and facilitate for them to fulfil their national
duty to increase the TFR , the government first introduced a Marriage & Parenthood Package
(MPP)13 in 2001, and have subsequently improved on it for three times over, e.g. in 2004, 2008 and
2013. It is noted that MPP will set the government back by an estimated $2 billion per year.

* A quick summary of the monetary/in kind benefits parents can expect from the government for

Especially for the perspective for provision of housing, the government has promised the following:

1. Married couples with children under the age of 16 and who are buying HDB flats for the first
time will get priority allocation of new flats.

2. Married couples with children who are renting flats directly from the HDB will also be able to
do so at affordable rates under the Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme 14 (PPHS)

3. A housing subsidy (in the form of CPF money) to help eligible first-timer citizen households
to buy a resale flat from the open market in which a higher tier family grant of max $40k is
given for applicants who is living near parents/ has a married child15

13
Marriage & Parenthood Package. http://www.population.sg/resources/summary-marriage-parenthood-measures/#.VPsbmPmUd8E. Retrieved 6 March 15
14
HDB Renting A Flat - Direct from HDB (PPHS) http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10323p.nsf/w/RentDirectPPHSOverview?OpenDocument. Retrieved 6 March 15
15
Promoting citizenship in HDB Households http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10321p.nsf/w/BuyResaleFlatBenefitsforSC?OpenDocument Retrieved 6 March 15
 4. Parenthood Priority Scheme16 (PPS) that helps first-timer married couples with children to
buy their first home. Under the PPS, 30% of the Build to Order (BTO) flat supply and 50% of
the Sales of Balance (SBF) flats will be set aside for applicant who have at least one child
(natural offspring from the lawful marriage or legally adopted) who is a Singapore Citizen
and age below 16 years old or if applicant is expecting their first child who is a Singapore
Citizen at the point of their BTO/SBF application

5. Third-Child Priority Scheme (TCP), in which the TCP Scheme is meant to encourage families
to have more than two children. Up to 5% of the available flat supply is set aside for offer to
TCP applicants. This can be applicable for the sale of Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS)
flats, in which developers will have the flexibility in applying this priority scheme. It will be
available during the initial project launch.

The HDB is also currently building the 3-Generation family (3GEN) 17 to house the extended family
and married couples with children. This will definitely provide more support for younger parents
with children for the grandparents to look after the children whilst the parents goes to work. This
has gone beyond the typical 5-room flat configuration to cater for families that want to consider
expanding their family size.

Lastly, as this year of 2015 is the nation’s SG50 celebration, hence there has also been a specially
developed baby SG50 Baby Jubilee Gift that will be made eligible 18 if the Singaporean baby is born in
2015. Admittedly, it is a bit of a stretched target for the Government's hope to raise Singapore's total
fertility rate from 1.2 to at least 1.4.

Still, despite all of the current housing related measures and various economic incentives to push for
an increase in TFR, it still reminds to be seen if the downturn in housing price for 2014 will
correspondingly lead to an increase in TFR for 2015.

16
HDB Priority Schemes: Buying a new flat http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10321p.nsf/w/BuyingNewFlatPriority?OpenDocument#TCP Retrieved 6 March 2015
17
3-Generation family (3GEN) https://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10321p.nsf/w/BuyingNewFlat3Gen?OpenDocument Retrieved 6 March 2015
18
Singapore Golden Jubilee Baby Gift 2015. http://www.heybaby.sg/sg50baby/ Retrieved 6 March 2015
What else could we have done differently to leverage on the housing system to improve TFR?

More importantly, even as married couples are hesitant about producing a baby when housing is
not readily available for the purpose of child bearing, the female’s biological clock will still be
relentlessly ticking. Hence given that Singaporeans’ are known to be a pragmatic bunch of people, I
would like to suggest that a proposal for “tiered post baby discounts” to encourage the production
of more babies. This will be targeted at married woman aged between 21 to 29 years old. A
percentage fixed discounted amount will be offset against the existing mortgage loan amount of the
couple.

a) If a married woman has her first baby before 30 years of age, a 10% write-off of the flat’s
purchase value will be given, against the current loan. (public housing)
b) If a married woman has her second baby before the 30 years of age, an additional 15%
write-off of the flats purchase value will be given, against the current loan. (public housing)
c) If a married woman has her third baby before the age of 35, an additional 18% write-off of
the flats purchase value will be given, against the current loan. (public housing)

This will help to maximise the life-time reproduction opportunities for the female. For female
married and above 30 of age, the value of “write-off” will be halved, with all babies to be delivered
before age of 39. Next, I would like to also set the ground right to highlight that is not a chauvinistic
proposal, nor was it meant to demean the value and grand purpose of giving life to another being to
just being another “transactional deal”. This is really meant to also provoke further thoughts on the
extent that the government is willing to accede towards, in reaching its 1.4-1.5 TFR target in the
medium, using housing policy as a social transfer mechanism to incentive such pro-creation
behavior.

Lastly, in order not to discriminate against other groups of citizen, the government should
also consider extending such scheme, bit by bit for the single mothers out there. This is not to run
contrary to its “pro-family” values but rather the single mothers, having usually less economic
resources to raise their children, should not be discriminated as every children born on local soil is a
Singaporean son and daughter. The act and judgement for the actions of the parents should never
be transferred unknowingly to an innocent baby, which can disadvantage them in the race of life.

In conclusion, direct subsidies scheme for the purchase of housing units will likely help
lighten the expenditure of parents, therefore freeing up resources to commit towards child-bearing
activities.
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March 15

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March 2015

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