Staying on an even keel amid challenges

Singapore saw improvements across all life stages of its citizens in 2021, with more children enrolled in pre-school, more eldercare spaces offered in nursing homes and daycare centres, and real median income growing following a decline in 2020. But alongside these improvements, 2021 also saw an increase in cases of child and elder abuse and calls to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), as well as a decrease in the number of citizen births. These developments, which reflected the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Singapore, were recorded in the latest public sector report card released on Tuesday.

The improvements were not limited to enrolment numbers or real incomes. There have been fundamental and qualitative changes too, such as in

the new Primary School Leaving Examination scoring system,

which was implemented in 2021 to reduce the fine differentiation of exam results and encourage students to focus on their own learning instead of comparing themselves with others. The Gini coefficient, an indicator of income inequality,

also fell in 2021 to 0.444

from 0.452 the year before, due to stronger income recovery among lower-income groups. It has been falling in the past decade, partly due to enhanced social policies and measures that support more individuals to be in employment.