Budget 2025: Families with three or more young children to receive more financial support
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Large families will get up to $16,000 in additional support for each third and subequent child born on or after Feb 18.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
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SINGAPORE – Families with three or more young children will get more financial benefits and support as part of new measures to encourage Singaporeans to have more children.
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced in his Budget speech
“Couples with more children often worry about additional costs because the demands grow with each additional child,” he said.
“We will introduce a Large Families Scheme to support married couples who have, or aspire to have, three or more children.”
The first part of the new scheme is the Child Development Account (CDA) First Step Grant, where baby number three, four or more born from Feb 18 can get $10,000, up from the current $5,000 all Singaporean children receive.
The funds can be used by parents for pre-school and healthcare expenses incurred by the child or his or her siblings.
Parents will also get $5,000 with the Large Family MediSave Grant for each third and subsequent Singaporean child born from Feb 18. This will be credited into the mother’s MediSave account, which can be used to offset pregnancy and delivery-related expenses, as well as approved dependants’ medical bills.
This is on top of the $5,000 MediSave Grant that all Singaporean children already get when they are born.
Finally, $1,000 in Large Family LifeSG Credits will be given each year to the third and subsequent child during the years that the child turns one to six. These credits can be used to defray a wide range of household expenses, such as grocery, utilities and transport bills.
Existing large families with at least one child aged six or below – those born between Jan 1, 2019, and Feb 17, 2025 – will also receive the $1,000 each year in Large Family LifeSG Credits, until the child turns six. This applies only for the third and subsequent Singaporean child.
In his speech, PM Wong cited several families which will benefit from the support measures, including the family of Mr Mageswaran Mervin and Madam Elizabeth Davaraj.
The couple, who have four children turning one, four, seven and eight in 2025, will receive $11,000 in benefits from this Budget. Apart from $500 in LifeSG credits for each child, they will get $1,000 annually in Large Family LifeSG Credits for each of their third and fourth children, up to when they turn six, said PM Wong.
Mr Mageswaran Mervin and Madam Elizabeth Davaraj, who have four children turning one, four, seven and eight in 2025, will receive $11,000 in benefits from this Budget.
PHOTO: MINISTRY OF FINANCE
Another couple, Mr Joel Seah and Ms Kristen Kiong, have two girls turning three and five, and are expecting their third child, a boy, in May. They will get $17,500 in total as a family, said PM Wong. This figure comprises the additional $16,000 for their third child, and $1,500 in LifeSG credits across the three children.
Ms Kiong, 36, who works as an allied healthcare worker, said she is happy with the financial help to transition to a bigger family.
“With every additional child, there is an extra child-caring burden, which often means engaging more help, or scaling back in the workforce.”
Mr Joel Seah and Ms Kristen Kiong, who have two girls, are expecting a boy in May. They will get $17,500 in aid from this Budget, and Ms Kiong says it will help with their transition to a bigger family.
PHOTO: JOEL SEAH AND KRISTEN KIONG
On what she likes about having a large family, she said: “It is nice to see them grow up together, and I am hoping in their older years they would have each other as company, especially when we are gone.”
PM Wong first mentioned that more help would be given to large families during the National Day Rally in 2024, adding that details were being worked out then. The Large Families Scheme will cost the Government around $80 million a year.
Singapore’s total fertility rate (TFR) fell to a record low of 0.97 in 2023.
According to Department of Statistics figures, the number of women who have three or more children at the end of their childbearing years fell in the past decade.
In 2024, 18 per cent of resident ever-married women in Singapore aged 40 to 49 had three or more children. This was down from 24 per cent in 2014.
The new scheme for large families comes on top of a host of initiatives to promote parenthood in the past few years, such as the larger Baby Bonus cash gift
The Government will also support all families with the cost of raising children with one-off top-ups to various accounts, said PM Wong.
Each Singaporean child from newborn to 12 will get $500 in Child LifeSG Credits, regardless of birth order. This means that all children, including first- and second-born children, will get this credit, which can be used to defray household expenses.
About 455,000 children are expected to benefit from these credits, which will be disbursed in July 2025 for those aged up to 12 in 2025. Those born in 2025 will get the credits in April 2026.
Each Singaporean child aged 13 to 16 will get a $500 top-up to their Edusave Account, and each Singaporean child aged 17 to 20 will get a $500 top-up to their Post-Secondary Education Account.
These top-ups, which will be disbursed in July 2025, are expected to benefit about 300,000 students across both age groups.
Additional reporting by Shermaine Ang
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