ARI Working Paper Series

Like many other “late industrializing” countries, Singapore faces a downward trend in marriage and fertility rates that have come to be seen as urgent national problems. The Singapore state has made numerous attempts to shape Singaporeans’ behaviour—using housing policies, tax incentives, and various campaigns to entice them to marry and have children. Combining data on state institutions and policies with in-depth interview data, the paper shows that these efforts have largely been failures if evaluated on the basis of their overt aims. However, they have had very important and interesting “latent effects.” The policies have produced norms and values about the “ideal” Singapore family form and the average Singaporean’s life path. In the process of negotiating state policies in their everyday lives, Singaporeans develop a specific sense of what “Singaporeans” do and how they do it; their own actions are then interpreted through this lens.