The first three paragraphs explain the inspiration for this piece. It is not new, but in the current ongoing focus on getting old people to keep working on and on and on, I think it's important to lose sight of this group of better-off Singaporeans. The looming prospect of 6.5 million people on this island is also a little intimidating.
Keep elderly from flying S'pore coop
Society's focus should also include the higher-income, who have wider options
Wednesday • June 20, 2007
Siew Kum Hong
AS with most young people, I have never really thought much about growing old or retirement. But that has been on my mind lately, resulting from separate comments by two older acquaintances, both professionals who should be on the verge of comfortable retirement.
One felt Singapore was already too crowded for him. He believed it would be "impossible to retire gracefully", given the expected future population of 6.5 million. His children, who find Singapore too stifling, have already left or are planning to leave.
The other, who is single, said somewhat morbidly that he intended to retire and live in Malaysia after his mother dies. His feelings may be best described as disenchantment and frustration with Singapore and our system, coupled with a sense of disenfranchisement.
So, why should we be concerned about retirees leaving Singapore? Is that not just one less elderly person for the rest of us to care for and, hence, something to cheer about?
That is precisely the sort of misconception that needs to be corrected.
In the first place, the elderly can still be productive members of society. They may either continue working (provided employer mindsets, among other things, are changed) or otherwise do volunteer work.
A recent global survey by HSBC and the Oxford Institute of Ageing found that 71 per cent of those aged between 60 and 70 worldwide are still working. Furthermore, up to 25 per cent of the elderly in Singapore do volunteer work, and this rate can be expected to rise as Singapore matures — North American and European countries had higher participation rates, with Canada hitting 50 per cent.
The survey concluded that those in their 60s and 70s are "a tremendous asset to society, not generally a burden".
Furthermore, the elderly who leave are generally those we want to keep, just like the young Singaporeans who decide to work overseas and do not return. Older folk with disposable funds to invest can be as globally mobile as young professionals. They have assets we should aim to keep in Singapore, and useful skills, abilities and experience that younger workers can learn from.
We have many ongoing efforts to address elderly needs, in recognition of our ageing population. But these are primarily focused on the lower-income elderly, to ensure their financial and other needs are adequately met.
There does not, as yet, seem to have been similar attention on the aspirations of the higher-income elderly.
But we need to start thinking about the high-income elderly as well. What drives them to leave? What can help to keep them in Singapore?
It is not new for people to want to retire outside Singapore. Historically, typical reasons have included a better quality and slower pace of life, and a lower cost of living. In other words, it is about getting away from the stresses of living in a busy urban environment, which are unavoidable given our geographical circumstances.
But, as Singapore grows and changes, new reasons for leaving may surface, and it bears considering whether anything can be done about those new reasons.
A lot comes down to issues of the quality of life and roots. We have always focused on making Singapore a great place to work and make money.
But old people, especially those who have already made their money, are not interested in that. They want a place in which they can be comfortable, in terms of physical and mental space, convenience and facilities, such as medical care.
Announcements such as the expected 6.5 million future population make many Singaporeans anxious, and understandably so. Many older Singaporeans know they do not want to live out their golden years in such a crowded country; younger Singaporeans may wonder if we do, even at our age.
Family ties can also help to keep Singaporeans here. But let us not forget that Perth, a popular retirement destination for many Singaporeans, is only five hours away by air. And the Internet has also shrunk the world. So, one can leave Singapore and still maintain ties with family here.
The issue of overseas retirement is one aspect of ageing that has not received much attention to date, perhaps because it is not quite as urgent as helping the low-income elderly secure their financial futures.
But I believe it bears watching out for, otherwise we risk losing a significant group of Singaporeans who are rich in assets, skills and experience. That would be a great loss, when people are our only natural resource.
The writer is a Nominated Member of Parliament and corporate counsel, commenting in his personal capacity.
Showing posts with label elderly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elderly. Show all posts
Sunday, 24 June 2007
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
Response to speranza nuova: who should pick up the bill for social assistance?
speranza nuova posted this comment in response to my posting on the TODAY article "How Many Portions Of Help, Sir?":
I thought this to be too important to bury in a comment, so I will respond to that article in this post. It has taken me a few days to write this.
Before I start, I will state for the record that I am fortunate enough to pay taxes (both direct and indirect), and a lot more taxes than what I directly receive from the system. (I am undecided on whether to put quotation marks around "fortunate" -- nobody likes paying taxes, but all things considered, including the fact that my revenue is almost 100% taxable income, I would rather be paying income tax than not. Unfortunately for me, I am not one of those lawyers whose salaries form the basis of the MR4 and SR9 benchmarks...) Please feel free to make of and extrapolate from that whatever you will.
Firstly, I'd like to take a step back from all that intellectualisation and rationalisation and philosophising in and around that article, and talk about what a society is or should be about.
To quote Wikipedia -- as unreliable as that can be for contentious issues:
I guess that is the "technical" meaning. To that I would the concept of values -- a society is also characterised by a common (if not universal) set of values and goals/aspirations.
So what sort of values and goals/aspirations should Singapore as a society have? What do we want it to be? Is it enough for Singapore society to exist in purely economic terms? Or do we want it to be something more?
I for one want it to be something more. I want Singapore to be a society that cares for and looks after its under-privileged and the less fortunate. I want it to be compassionate and inclusive, as over-used as that term has become. I want it to to go beyond numbers and statistics and economics and cold logic. I want it to empathise and sympathise.
In short, I want Singapore to have a heart. And I do not think that that is necessarily inconsistent or irreconciliable with Singapore as a functioning, effective, successful capitalist economy plugged into a globalised world.
So let's go back to the article. As I see it, the problem is that the article is too intellectualised and overly-grounded in economic theory. It approaches the issue in a vacuum of economic theory. It is perfect fodder for technocrats, but it does not describe real life.
A government that is nothing more than a technocracy would make for a truly sad society. I do not think -- and I pray -- that we do not have such a government or such a society.
Yes, this is a more emotive and emotional approach than the stone-cold rationality and logic employed in the article. I do not see that as a flaw, but as a strength.
So let's move from a generalised critique to a more detailed examination of the article's points.
I have already defined what sort of society I want Singapore to be. In theory, this may be achieved by the efforts of the Government, non-governmental actors (such as private charities), or of both.
Zeroing in on the specific issue of the care of elderly citizens who are not being cared for by their children or family, I think the situation in Singapore is that both the Government and private charities play a role, under the so-called "many helping hands" approach. But the primary expectation is for people to take care of themselves, or for their families to step up.
My question is: what happens when people are not, for any reason (including their own financial irresponsibility), able to take care of themselves, and their families do not step up, and they somehow fall through the cracks of private charities? Do we then adopt a judgmental view of them and their actions and their irresponsibility, and deny them assistance on the basis that "they should have known better" and that doing so would be economically inefficient?
Government is about hard choices. But does the choice have to be so hard for other people?
It is fundamentally an issue of one's view on what is the acceptable/requisite level of economic (in)efficiency when allocating scarce resources. I think Singapore as a society can afford to, and should, allocate our resources in a manner that is less economically efficient, but more (to my mind) holistically beneficial. (And that is also my problem with the HDB's position when it comes to allocating rental flats and other forms of accomodation assistance to the needy. Denying help to people who are "financially irresponsible" is not, to my mind, defensible. Not in this day and age of plenty and prosperity.)
I do not advocate unlimited provision of assistance, but I do believe we can do more. It may be economically inefficient, but not everything can or should be reduced to a question of economic efficiency.
An analysis using only economic theory assumes that everything is quantifiable and reducible to value and utility -- well, can you quantify your soul? Can you reduce to a dollar value, or any other objective metric, the general feeling of well-being and security that comes from knowing that you will never be completely abandoned and left in the cold? (And while I do not intend to talk about Bhutan's happiness index because I think it is cliched, I do believe that it is cliched for a good reason. That example does show up the drawbacks of using economic theory as the sole analytical tool and economic efficiency as the only indicator of good governance.)
In a recent posting on Tomorrow.sg, a blogger wrote about how wonderful the UK NHS was -- because he and his wife were benefitting from it. Even though they were foreigners and neither citizens nor PRs. A good friend of mine, whose girlfriend's mum is terminal ill-health in Canada, shares the same view about the Canadian system, which is providing her with free medical care and at a qualitatively high level as well.
These systems are, by most conventional accounts, economically inefficient. But to their beneficiaries, they are important and give huge amounts of comfort. My memory of A-Level Economics is that economic efficiency is about matching cost with utility. So just how do we account for all that utility when assessing whether these public health systems are economically efficient? Do we simply ignore that, just because it is not quantifiable?
I would be the first to admit, that assessments of whether a non-quantifiable benefit is worth the economic inefficiency is inherently subjective. But an argument based purely on economic efficiency itself masks an underlying subjective view, that economic efficiency is the only (or primary) standard of evaluation of policy.
It is true that when I advocate more spending on helping the elderly for whom no other help is available or easily available, I am ultimately advocating how to spend other people's money. I pay a bit in taxes, but I am under no illusion about just how much I spend!
Having said that, the same is true of all public expenditures, even public expenditure on public goods. Take street lighting. The amount of benefit I get from street lighting does also depend on where I live, whether I drive, how far I have to walk to get home, etc. Or defence -- how much it means to me depends on how globally mobile I am, whether I can emigrate, whether I have overseas PR.
So even public goods benefit some more than others. We do not quibble with public goods on that basis. So why do we quibble with private goods on that basis?
If spending a bit more on this would deprive some others of Governmental expenditure, then that merits a closer scrutiny and more thinking about which resource utilisation is more meritorious. But I think our Government has enough money (theoretical Budget deficit notwithstanding -- mark my words, at the end of this Government's term, we will somehow still have accumulated enough surpluses for a generous benefits package) that it is not a zero-sum game.
In conclusion, I would say this. Government is not just about management. It is not just about managing dollars and cents, or an exclusive focus on ensuring an economically-efficient allocation of resources, or an overriding respect for private actors' freedom to allocate their property as they deem fit without state intervention. It is not just about cold hard logic and economic theory.
Government is about all that. But it is also about more. It is also about leadership, political, economic and most of all moral. It is about empathy and compassion. It is about caring and sharing, and ensuring that no one gets left too far behind.
And yes, it is about emotions. Because at the end of the day, people are people. People have hearts. People have feelings. People are not digits. And we always need to remember that.
Hi Mr Siew,
While on this topic, I thought you might want to peek at an article written by one of my Singapore Angle colleagues:
On a Not Uncommon Line of Argument
It raises a difficult issue: Who should pick up the bill, when an elderly person's family has chosen not to provide support?
I thought this to be too important to bury in a comment, so I will respond to that article in this post. It has taken me a few days to write this.
Before I start, I will state for the record that I am fortunate enough to pay taxes (both direct and indirect), and a lot more taxes than what I directly receive from the system. (I am undecided on whether to put quotation marks around "fortunate" -- nobody likes paying taxes, but all things considered, including the fact that my revenue is almost 100% taxable income, I would rather be paying income tax than not. Unfortunately for me, I am not one of those lawyers whose salaries form the basis of the MR4 and SR9 benchmarks...) Please feel free to make of and extrapolate from that whatever you will.
Firstly, I'd like to take a step back from all that intellectualisation and rationalisation and philosophising in and around that article, and talk about what a society is or should be about.
To quote Wikipedia -- as unreliable as that can be for contentious issues:
"A society is a grouping of individuals, which is characterized by common interest and may have distinctive culture and institutions. ... In the social sciences such as sociology society has been used to mean a group of people that form a semi-closed social system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group."
I guess that is the "technical" meaning. To that I would the concept of values -- a society is also characterised by a common (if not universal) set of values and goals/aspirations.
So what sort of values and goals/aspirations should Singapore as a society have? What do we want it to be? Is it enough for Singapore society to exist in purely economic terms? Or do we want it to be something more?
I for one want it to be something more. I want Singapore to be a society that cares for and looks after its under-privileged and the less fortunate. I want it to be compassionate and inclusive, as over-used as that term has become. I want it to to go beyond numbers and statistics and economics and cold logic. I want it to empathise and sympathise.
In short, I want Singapore to have a heart. And I do not think that that is necessarily inconsistent or irreconciliable with Singapore as a functioning, effective, successful capitalist economy plugged into a globalised world.
So let's go back to the article. As I see it, the problem is that the article is too intellectualised and overly-grounded in economic theory. It approaches the issue in a vacuum of economic theory. It is perfect fodder for technocrats, but it does not describe real life.
A government that is nothing more than a technocracy would make for a truly sad society. I do not think -- and I pray -- that we do not have such a government or such a society.
Yes, this is a more emotive and emotional approach than the stone-cold rationality and logic employed in the article. I do not see that as a flaw, but as a strength.
So let's move from a generalised critique to a more detailed examination of the article's points.
I have already defined what sort of society I want Singapore to be. In theory, this may be achieved by the efforts of the Government, non-governmental actors (such as private charities), or of both.
Zeroing in on the specific issue of the care of elderly citizens who are not being cared for by their children or family, I think the situation in Singapore is that both the Government and private charities play a role, under the so-called "many helping hands" approach. But the primary expectation is for people to take care of themselves, or for their families to step up.
My question is: what happens when people are not, for any reason (including their own financial irresponsibility), able to take care of themselves, and their families do not step up, and they somehow fall through the cracks of private charities? Do we then adopt a judgmental view of them and their actions and their irresponsibility, and deny them assistance on the basis that "they should have known better" and that doing so would be economically inefficient?
Government is about hard choices. But does the choice have to be so hard for other people?
It is fundamentally an issue of one's view on what is the acceptable/requisite level of economic (in)efficiency when allocating scarce resources. I think Singapore as a society can afford to, and should, allocate our resources in a manner that is less economically efficient, but more (to my mind) holistically beneficial. (And that is also my problem with the HDB's position when it comes to allocating rental flats and other forms of accomodation assistance to the needy. Denying help to people who are "financially irresponsible" is not, to my mind, defensible. Not in this day and age of plenty and prosperity.)
I do not advocate unlimited provision of assistance, but I do believe we can do more. It may be economically inefficient, but not everything can or should be reduced to a question of economic efficiency.
An analysis using only economic theory assumes that everything is quantifiable and reducible to value and utility -- well, can you quantify your soul? Can you reduce to a dollar value, or any other objective metric, the general feeling of well-being and security that comes from knowing that you will never be completely abandoned and left in the cold? (And while I do not intend to talk about Bhutan's happiness index because I think it is cliched, I do believe that it is cliched for a good reason. That example does show up the drawbacks of using economic theory as the sole analytical tool and economic efficiency as the only indicator of good governance.)
In a recent posting on Tomorrow.sg, a blogger wrote about how wonderful the UK NHS was -- because he and his wife were benefitting from it. Even though they were foreigners and neither citizens nor PRs. A good friend of mine, whose girlfriend's mum is terminal ill-health in Canada, shares the same view about the Canadian system, which is providing her with free medical care and at a qualitatively high level as well.
These systems are, by most conventional accounts, economically inefficient. But to their beneficiaries, they are important and give huge amounts of comfort. My memory of A-Level Economics is that economic efficiency is about matching cost with utility. So just how do we account for all that utility when assessing whether these public health systems are economically efficient? Do we simply ignore that, just because it is not quantifiable?
I would be the first to admit, that assessments of whether a non-quantifiable benefit is worth the economic inefficiency is inherently subjective. But an argument based purely on economic efficiency itself masks an underlying subjective view, that economic efficiency is the only (or primary) standard of evaluation of policy.
It is true that when I advocate more spending on helping the elderly for whom no other help is available or easily available, I am ultimately advocating how to spend other people's money. I pay a bit in taxes, but I am under no illusion about just how much I spend!
Having said that, the same is true of all public expenditures, even public expenditure on public goods. Take street lighting. The amount of benefit I get from street lighting does also depend on where I live, whether I drive, how far I have to walk to get home, etc. Or defence -- how much it means to me depends on how globally mobile I am, whether I can emigrate, whether I have overseas PR.
So even public goods benefit some more than others. We do not quibble with public goods on that basis. So why do we quibble with private goods on that basis?
If spending a bit more on this would deprive some others of Governmental expenditure, then that merits a closer scrutiny and more thinking about which resource utilisation is more meritorious. But I think our Government has enough money (theoretical Budget deficit notwithstanding -- mark my words, at the end of this Government's term, we will somehow still have accumulated enough surpluses for a generous benefits package) that it is not a zero-sum game.
In conclusion, I would say this. Government is not just about management. It is not just about managing dollars and cents, or an exclusive focus on ensuring an economically-efficient allocation of resources, or an overriding respect for private actors' freedom to allocate their property as they deem fit without state intervention. It is not just about cold hard logic and economic theory.
Government is about all that. But it is also about more. It is also about leadership, political, economic and most of all moral. It is about empathy and compassion. It is about caring and sharing, and ensuring that no one gets left too far behind.
And yes, it is about emotions. Because at the end of the day, people are people. People have hearts. People have feelings. People are not digits. And we always need to remember that.
Monday, 19 March 2007
Pain Plus Progress
Last Friday's edition of TODAY carried a story about the upgrading of HDB flats. It reported on how HDB's ongoing Project Life (Lift Improvement and Facilities Enhancement for the Elderly) programme to upgrade one-room rental flats (which is A Very Good Thing) has resulted in some of the tenants having to sleep in the corridors and common areas (which is self-evidently A Very Bad Thing).
If you have ever been through or seen what happens during an upgrading exercise, you will understand why that happens. If a man's home is his castle, then upgrading represents a temporary invasion and occupation of that castle by well-meaning, benevolent invaders.
Your flat becomes a huge mess, with plastic sheets and tarpaulins draped all over your stuff, workers trampling all over the place, and dust and dirt all over the floor. You lose the part of your flat that is being worked upon. And when it's a one-room flat, that basically means you lose your flat. So I'm not surprised that some of the tenants preferred to sleep in the corridor.
There were two things in this article that really hit home for me. The first was the quote by Mr Chan Sai Meng, about HDB's response to his request for the unused rental flats to be opened up for temporary use, that it was "too tough" administratively. The civil service might have a No Wrong Door policy, but it's pointless when the right door opens directly into a brick wall.
The second thing was Mr Chan's parting shot at the end of the article, and his last two sentences really, really affected me:
The next Parliamentary sitting is on 9 April 2007. I am going to file a PQ on this. It is not acceptable.
If you have ever been through or seen what happens during an upgrading exercise, you will understand why that happens. If a man's home is his castle, then upgrading represents a temporary invasion and occupation of that castle by well-meaning, benevolent invaders.
Your flat becomes a huge mess, with plastic sheets and tarpaulins draped all over your stuff, workers trampling all over the place, and dust and dirt all over the floor. You lose the part of your flat that is being worked upon. And when it's a one-room flat, that basically means you lose your flat. So I'm not surprised that some of the tenants preferred to sleep in the corridor.
There were two things in this article that really hit home for me. The first was the quote by Mr Chan Sai Meng, about HDB's response to his request for the unused rental flats to be opened up for temporary use, that it was "too tough" administratively. The civil service might have a No Wrong Door policy, but it's pointless when the right door opens directly into a brick wall.
The second thing was Mr Chan's parting shot at the end of the article, and his last two sentences really, really affected me:
“You must have a solution before this programme starts... The Government said (to) progress together with the people. I don’t want to progress if it is so painful and without dignity. You go ahead.”
The next Parliamentary sitting is on 9 April 2007. I am going to file a PQ on this. It is not acceptable.
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