SINGAPORE: The fertility rate of Singapore, which reached a historic low of 0.87 in 2025, has become an issue of national importance that the Government is doing something about, such as forming the Marriage & Parenthood Reset workgroup.
Singaporeans have also been tackling the issue online, such as when a local Reddit user initiated a discussion as to whether setting the workweek at a maximum of 40 hours would serve to help solve the problem.
Earlier this week, u/6fac3e70 wrote that Mexico had capped the number of working hours at 40 per week and employers were told not to cut salaries.
They wrote that they have one child but work between 45 and 48 hours a week, adding, “not being able to spend enough time with family and being tired from work are dampening factors for more kids. Beyond the dollars and cents, it’s time and energy that money can’t buy.”
They wondered if the official Taskforce is considering this as one of the reasons for the low birth rate, but added that based on a self-assessment tool from the Ministry of Manpower, managers or professionals cannot “expect the law to protect you in terms of the number of hours you work” to the detriment of the number of hours spent with the family.
“Isn’t it pretty obvious why and does a task force really need to be set up to find out what we all already know?
Capping hours would mean you’ll need to hire more people to do the same job, and so that would even boost employment,” the post author added.
Historic low TFR
Earlier this year, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said that with Singapore’s citizen population growing by only 0.7 in 2025, it’s possible that by the early 2040s, the citizen population will begin to shrink.
In 2023 and 2024, the total fertility rate was at 0.97. Ideally, the TFR should be around 2.1 for developed countries in order to maintain a stable population. This value is known as the replacement level.
The last year that Singapore’s TFR was at 2.1 was in 1975. Since 1976, it has been below replacement level. DPM Gan added that resident births have declined to around 27,500, which is the lowest on record. Importantly, marriage rates have also dropped, and married couples are having fewer children or none at all.
“If no new measures are taken, our citizen population will start to shrink by the early part of the 2040s,” he said, though he added that “we cannot give up.”
What commenters are saying
Reddit users who commented on the post tended to agree, saying that they could definitely use more work-life balance.
“If MY and other countries can do so 40 hours, why can’t we? We’re inefficient with our time use anyway, moving to 40 will force efficiency rather than have staff out on 2-hour lunch breaks and spreading work throughout the day,” wrote one, adding that they’re most efficient the first four hours of the workday.
“It’s 2026. There are still some of us working 5.5 or 6-day weeks, btw,” a commenter added.
Another Reddit user, however, wrote, “Work hours are not even the issue now. It’s the job uncertainty in general…
We are all already in debt with our BTO / resale, renovation, and student loans. A lot of us still have to take care of our ageing parents’ medical bills. We can be retrenched tomorrow with zero benefits.
We are not like other countries, where we can just move out of the city into a cheaper area. We are stuck in the most expensive city in the world for our whole lives. There is no way we can have kids.”
“I am guessing only certain jobs would benefit. For example, teachers are notorious for bringing work home and continuing to mark over the weekends. So a hard cap on working hours is meaningless if overall workload doesn’t change,” a commenter pointed out, adding, “I am still for a 4-day work week. Way more tangible, and we also save in other aspects, such as travelling time. Plus, it’s also easier to plan for short getaways.” /TISG
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