Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Sustainable Development Goals
Introduction
For years, sustainable development has played a significant role in developing Singapore. Although Singapore is still a young nation, it has made a significant process in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have been established under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Gupta & Vegelin, 2016, p.434). Singapore has restructured policies that align with long-term sustainability. The developing country has also attempted to manage its scarce resources such as energy and water, and integrating nature by creating a Garden City. Moreover, the SDGs have enhanced the education sector by creating affordable and accessible education to provide each child with a solid start. For the nation to support its aging population, it has reviewed the healthcare subsidies and policies.
Currently, all Singaporeans, regardless of their class or age, can now enjoy quality education and healthcare, clean water, air, and proper sanitation. Typically, different countries should adopt multiple sustainable development models. Every country is required to embrace solutions that fit their particular priorities or circumstances. Therefore, it is essential, especially for developing countries, to learn from other nation’s experiences in establishing SDGs (Hickel et al., 2015). For Singapore, it is mainly focused on achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This paper will evaluate the progress Singapore has made towards achieving its SDG of ending poverty by embracing social assistance.
Implementation of the Social Assistance Approach
Singapore aims toward achieving a caring, inclusive, and fair society. Individuals from different backgrounds can access equal opportunities and where vulnerable citizens can get enriched; thus, all Singaporeans can now be optimistic about their future. For Singapore to achieve this, it must seek ways to create conditions that facilitate growth and offer opportunities to empower its citizens as well as improve their lives. The country has attempted encouraging community-led initiatives, which aim to help the needy in society. In essence, this approach promotes a particular culture where individuals work to improve their conditions in a self-sustaining and dignified way and become successful. Singapore has implemented comprehensive mutual-reinforcing social and economic strategies in achieving this SDG. These strategies are based on extensive social uplifting by creating better access to quality public healthcare, housing, education, employment, and sustained income growth. The SDG ensures Singaporeans are provided with diverse assistance levels, with each level supporting particular needs in a targeted way. Some of the policies used in social assistance approach include:
Subsidized Public Housing
Singapore has worked towards providing each citizen with access to affordable, quality, and proper housing. Homeownership has been a significant pillar for a healthy community as well as gives Singaporeans a tangible stake. For Singapore to achieve this, public housing has been kept affordable by providing mortgage loan installments, accessibility of Central Provident Fund (CPF) home savings, and government subsidies (Teo, 2017, p.417). Moreover, Singapore has introduced wide-ranging housing schemes and grants to reduce the costs of financing loans for families or individuals in need as well as minimize the cost of buying a flat. Today, Singapore is considered one of the nations with the highest homeownership rates globally. For instance, 9 in 10 Singapore’s resident households own their homes, with at least 4 in 5 resident households living in public housing established through the Housing and Development Board (HBD) (Phang, 2016, p.234).
Retirement Adequacy
In 1955, Singapore created the Central Provident Fund (CPF) to offer financial security for individual retirements. Today, CPF has evolved to build the foundation of Singapore’s social security structure as it now provides housing, retirement, and healthcare needs of Singaporeans. Employers and employees are now expected to contribute a certain amount of their monthly salaries towards their CPF accounts. CPF add-ons are mainly used to assist individual or low-income families in need. Additionally, there is the Silver Support Scheme (SSS) that provide support to citizens above 65 years who have little family support and had low incomes in their prime age (Chen & Tan, 2018, p.6). The scheme provides these individuals with quarterly cash disbursements that enhance their retirement incomes.
Affordable healthcare
Singapore’s government has embraced a multi-tiered approach in healthcare coverage that ensures no Singaporean is deprived of basic healthcare access because of financial difficulties. This approach entails comprehensive subsidies in the public healthcare systems and institutions, including MediShield Life and Medisave. Patients from middle or low-income families tend to get more subsidies according to individual means-testing status. In 2014, Singapore introduced the Pioneer Generation Package (PGP) to help Pioneers with financial help to cover their healthcare expenses (Mokhtar, 2020).
Employment Assistance
Singapore has put various schemes that support low-wage employees by rewarding their effort and work and upgrading as well as encouraging individual skills through training. For example, Singapore has embraced the progressive model that assists in increasing workers’ wages in the landscaping, security, and cleaning sectors by improving their productivity and upgrading their skills. Besides, there is the Workfare Training Support (WTS) scheme, which focuses on skills upgrading (Istiqomah et al., 2011).
Access to Quality Education
In any country, education is considered essential when creating schemes that will ensure all citizens access opportunities. Singapore has made significant investments in its school system, and preschools, which has enabled each child to get access to quality education and have an excellent start in life, irrespective of their family income. This is achieved through the creation of subsidies, bursaries, and the Ministry of Education (MOE) Finance Assistance scheme (Tan, 2017, p.7).
Social Safety Policies
Apart from social transfers and government subsidies, Singapore has implemented various social safety policies that offer assistance to particular individuals in need through support for healthcare needs, housing, and financial aid covering basic living expenses. These policies include:
ComCare
Singapore has created Comcare, which assists in providing its low-income citizens with financial support to get their basic needs. Comcare entails several schemes, such as Long-Term Assistance (LTA) and Short-to-Medium-Term Assistance (SMTA) (Aw et al., 2017, p.48). SMTA aims to provide low-income individuals or families who may be temporarily incapable of working due to conditions such as caregiving responsibilities, illness, and others who are temporarily unemployed but are seeking employment. For LTA, it supports individuals incapable of working due to disability, old age, long-term illness, and have no or less family support. Moreover, assistance, including rent, utilities, employment, and medical assistance, may be offered according to individually assessed needs.
Medifund
Singapore has created Medifund that ensures low-income patients who have no finances to cover for their medical bills, despite receiving other payment means or even government subsidies. For Singapore to deliver more targeted support for low-income young and elderly individuals, it has introduced Medifund Junior and Medifund Silver (Ong et al., 2018, p.434).
Barriers in Achieving Singapore’s SDG of Ending Poverty
Singapore has and is set to experience several challenges in its Sustainable Development Goal of ending poverty. Some of the challenges include:
Demographic Changes
Demographic changes such as complex family structures increased divorce rates, and decreasing family sizes have gradually tested the reliability and strength of family support, which are centered on traditional family structures.
Increasing Social Spending Demands
As Singapore continues struggling with an aging population, social spending demands are likely to grow further. Singapore is considered among the fastest-aging societies globally. Currently, one in every eight citizens is at least 65 years (Thang & Suen, 2018, p.133). This aging population is expected to increase to one in four Singaporeans by 2030. Therefore, with this fast-aging population, social services, including healthcare, are expected to increase their expenditure.
Recommendations
Singapore should introduce various schemes that protect citizens from large hospital bills or other subsidies essential in supporting the increasing demand for caregiving services. It should also increase the efforts in supporting vulnerable and low-income seniors since the aging population is expected to grow by 2030 rapidly. This support can be through creating community networks for the seniors, which aims to strengthen collaboration and coordination between community-based and government stakeholders. Such support is crucial since it leverage both sides resourced and strengths as they support the senior in society. Additionally, since education is crucial for a country’s growth, Singapore should invest comprehensively in education, especially preschool education. By providing every child with better childhood education, Singapore will strengthen the future support of children from vulnerable or low-income families.
Conclusion
Singapore’s policies are primarily based on sustainability. SDGs act as an ethos that restructures the government’s policymaking framework. Singapore SDGs are aligned with the 2030 Agenda. In Singapore, poverty is something that cannot be ignored or even deem its existence since it’s a societal problem. Therefore, it has been addressed as an SDG to provide a permanent and suitable solution. The SDG depicts that fighting poverty is not only improving low-income individual lives but also improving the whole society. By embracing and improving social welfare, Singapore is expected to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.
References
Aw, S., Koh, G., Oh, Y.J., Wong, M.L., Vrijhoef, H.J., Harding, S.C., Geronimo, M.A.B., Lai, C.Y.F. and Hildon, Z.J., 2017. Explaining the continuum of social participation among older adults in Singapore: from ‘closed doors’ to active aging in multi-ethnic community settings. Journal of aging studies, 42, pp.46-55.
Chen, Y. and Tan, Y.J., 2018. The effect of non-contributory pensions on labor supply and private income transfers: evidence from Singapore. IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 7(1), p.6.
Gupta, J., and Vegelin, C., 2016. Sustainable developmenU.N.goals and inclusive development. International environmental agreements: politics, law, and economics, 16(3), pp.433-448.
Hickel, J., Kirk, M., and Brewer, J., 2015. The pope v the UN: Who will saveI.A. world first. The Guardian, 23.
Istiqomah, D.A., Tay, F.S. and Teng, W.W., 2011. The effectiveness of workfare income supplement scheme in helping the poor in Singapore.
Mokhtar, I.A., 2020. Engaging and Helping Seniors: The Case of the Pioneer Generation Ambassadors in Singapore. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, 10(2).
Ong, S.E., Tyagi, S., Lim, J.M., Chia, K.S. and Legido-Quigley, H., 2018. Health systems reforms in Singapore: A qualitative study of key stakeholders. Health Policy, 122(4), pp.431-443.
Phang, S.Y., 2016. Singapore’s housing policies: responding to the challenges of economic transitions. In Singapore’s Economic Development: Retrospection and Reflections (pp. 221-248).
Tan, C.T., 2017. Enhancing the quality of kindergarten education in Singapore: policies and strategies in the 21st century. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 11(1), p.7.
Teo, Y., 2017. The Singaporean welfare state system: with special reference to public housing and the Central Provident Fund. In The Routledge international handbook to welfare state systems (pp. 415-429). Routledge.
Thang, L.L. and Suen, J., 2018. Singapore’s approach to ageing policies: Tackling the limits of the family in supporting seniors. In Family and Population Changes in Singapore (pp. 131-149). Routledge.
United Nations Sustainable Development. 2020. Sustainable Development At Center Of 10Th Internet Governance Forum. [online] Available at: <https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2015/11/sustainable-development-at-center-of-10th-internet-governance-forum/> [Accessed 7 June 2020].