“But I must say, I’m not likely to give good news on the TFR front,” Gan says of 2025’s TFR, which has yet to be announced. His ministerial colleague, Siow, was even more pointed in his remarks, calling Singapore’s TFR of 0.97 in 2024 an “abysmal” result.
We are not the only country struggling with a declining birth rate. China, Japan and South Korea are all facing the same problem. What’s peculiar is how almost every country is chasing population growth, whether it be through pro-birth or pro-immigration policies, to keep their economies going.
In 2024, Tokyo’s government said it was launching a dating app to encourage marriages. As for Singapore, the city-state has long been known for its generous baby bonuses as well as its immigration policies to attract foreign talent.
These are imperfect solutions to an exceedingly complicated problem. There are a multitude of reasons, including shifting gender expectations and the rising cost of living, for a falling birth rate. It is just not possible to raise births by turning to an easy fix like throwing money at the problem. That goes for immigration as well, which if ill-managed can result in polarised societies. The UK’s decision to vote for Brexit was in part due to the perception that uncontrolled immigration was making life tougher for UK citizens.
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To be sure, immigration will not go away. Drawing in high-skilled foreign talent will help bolster a country’s economy and dynamism. This has to be done whether or not birth rates are declining. Singapore’s Siow was right to say that the country needs “to do a better job with integration so that we can do more immigration”. Often, it’s not immigration but differences in cultural norms and expectations that ruffle feathers. Getting that balance right will ensure that immigration enriches rather than dilutes a nation’s identity.
Instead, what policymakers need to consider is whether an economy disrupted by AI will require an ever-growing workforce. Dario Amodei, the CEO of leading AI company Anthropic, says we may just be six to 12 months away from AI being able to do most of the work being done by software engineers. Throw in robotics and it is not hard to imagine a world where less, not more human labour will be demanded. This will have profound implications on the labour market and may even emancipate countries from having to worry about the size of their population.
Policymakers need to draw the right links between investing in AI, growing the economy and managing demographic decline. These are not separate problems but components of a single revolution that is happening right in front of us. If governments believe in the transformative potential of AI, then they should take bolder steps to develop a nimble workforce that can use technology to do more with less — with an eye on growing the economy.
Economic growth is no doubt a crucial goal for any government, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that policymakers should frame the solution as simply having more babies or taking in more immigrants. As with all things in life, a thoughtful and considered approach could go a long way toward solving intractable problems.
