Housing prices and birth rates

Quote from an article by Lucky Tan

The average US single family home is US$230K and the (S$290K) average size of such a home is 2500 sq feet[Link] - a landed home of the same size in Singapore costs more than $2M and something half the size in the form of an apartment costs $800K-$1M. We are often told that our fertility rate is falling because we are a developed country so people pursue qualification and careers rather than get married and have children.

"Partly, because it takes them longer to establish themselves (in a job)....people are staying in school longer nowadays. In the past, after their O -- Level and A -- Level, people start getting economically active, get a job, start a family and buy a flat. (Now) it is taking longer for young people to get to that stage because they feel they need better qualifications to get better jobs.....Elsewhere it has been shown that the demand of the job has increased and people need higher skills to enter the labour force and get a job before they start a family." - Lee Kuan Yew 

When a person starts a family, the one thing he needs is housing otherwise he has to squeeze his family into his parents' place and you don't expect him squeeze himself, his wife and children with his parents. The key to higher fertility is affordable housing and the size of housing. The PAP govt has wasted time and money on other incentives that have done nothing but failed - they claim they are trying very hard to bump up the fertility rate as it falls to the lowest in the world. HDB even said they build smaller flat these days because Singapore families are getting smaller - they are actually putting us in a vicious cycle. I think Singaporeans are really tired and fed up of the PAP creating the problems then blaming it on Singaporeans ...then waste time and money on schemes that will not work. The next time some one from the tries to explain our low fertility and talk about solutions ....remember unless they home prices are at truly affordable levels, it is yet another waste of time and our country is further endangered by importing more people which causes population density and housing prices to go up.

The root cause of our problem has been PAP policies - first the "Stop At 2" policy and housing policies. The PAP has been using revenues from our public housing programme to fill up govt coffers [HDB paying less for land is raid on reserves: Mah] from the CPF and savings of ordinary Singaporeans. No other govt does this with public housing - linking it to the market and creating reserves - the primary purpose is to provide cheap and achieve positive social outcomes. This is not what happened in Singapore and the PAP housing policy has led to whole array of problems e.g. inability to accumulate enough to retire, low fertility, indebtedness and social inequality. Now the problems have grown to endanger ordinary Singaporeans - we have stop procreating, we are being replaced by foreigners and we do not have children to pass our values and culture to.  Time is running out for the PAP govt to fix this and from what we have seen from them - they are not serious about it and Singaporeans are running out of patience.