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THE AUSPICIOUS YEAR of the Dragon invariably sees a spike in the number of babies born. And what do most parents want for their children? Many have high hopes for their children when it comes to careers and life choices. But ultimately, most hope their children will have better lives than they did. That is, of course, a foggy concept as a better life means different things to different people. To some, it’s a university degree; to others, it’s attaining Singapore’s five Cs (cash, car, credit card, condominium and country club).
However, it’s safe to say that for most people, it means having greater social status among your peers, being more educated and moving up the income ladder. This notion of achieving greater socioeconomic status than your parents — known as intergenerational mobility — is of increasing interest in these times of rising income inequality, as it is tied to the idea of equal opportunity. Just because your family is poor shouldn’t mean you should stay poor.
The findings from a recent Ministry of Finance (MOF) study on intergenerational mobility suggest that mobility in incomes and education has been “relatively high” in Singapore, at least for boys born between 1969 and 1978. The sample comprised 39,500 father-son pairs, with daughters and younger sons left out to avoid gender or birth-order biases. The age group, comprising men between 30 and 39 years in 2008, was chosen due to limited income data available in Singapore. By global yardsticks, Singapore’s intergenerational mobility is better than in countries such as the US and UK. It is, however, lower than the Nordic countries and Canada, drawing on comparable 2010 OECD data.
To some extent, this socioeconomic mobility in Singapore was driven by growth. The economy has been in high gear, with GDP growth averaging a high 7.8% in the 1980s and 7.3% in the 1990s. At the same time, educational opportunities have expanded with new universities and higher education institutes springing up. As the MOF points out, a simple cross-tabulation of father-child educational attainment for children born between 1972 and 1978 suggests a fairly large increase in the child’s educational attainment over the father.
However, we are now at a pivotal point. Singapore’s future pace of growth, some economists believe, could languish in the low single digits. Moreover, there are now more degree holders and professionals in the workforce than ever before. In 2000, just 19% of Singapore residents aged 30 to 39 had a tertiary education. A decade on, 43% of 30- somethings have a university degree (or even multiple degrees).
