As the city-state approaches its 50th year of independence in 2015, it’s not all celebrations according to Forbes and Singapore’s citizens seem to agree. In a 2011 Gallup survey, the percentage of residents who thought that things would develop for the worse in five years was among the highest in the world. The decline in optimism is partly based on the city’s economy. Whilst its GDP growth is at a steady and comfortable 5 per cent per year, real wages for ordinary Singaporeans have stagnated. From 1998 to 2008, the income of the low-income 20 per cent of households dropped an average of 2.7 per cent while the salaries of the richest 20 per cent rose by more than half. In the 30 years before the millennium incomes doubled or improved considerably every decade. Despite this, Singaporean living standards are high, in particular because the Housing Development Board offers the majority of Singaporeans clean and fairly spacious apartments allowing low-income families a decent lifestyle.

A big Singaporean problem, however, is its plunging fertility caused by long working hours and increasing costs. The fertility rate is under 1.2 endangering Singapore to turn into a city with an increasingly old population. Many Singaporeans have therefore left the city-state and many more are said to want to migrate. Since 1970 the percentage of Singaporean citizens among the residential population has fallen from 90 to 63 per cent allowing more and more foreign workers into the city.

These days Singapore is also feeling China’s pull. Take the education sector as an example: the Economic Development Board brought several high-profile foreign institutions into the country as part of its drive to develop Singapore into a higher education hub. One of them was the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business which settled in Singapore in 2000. But now the renowned business school is pulling its executive education programme out of Singapore again and is setting it up in Hong Kong to be closer to China and its economy.

Sources: Forbes; asiaone