Budget 2026: Enhanced ComLink+ packages give low-income families a stronger nudge up the social ladder

SINGAPORE – For children born to Singapore’s poorest families, the climb up the social ladder is getting steeper.

New data released by the Ministry of Finance

(MOF) showed that about one in four children born to fathers in the lowest 20 per cent of income earners remained in that same income bracket as adults. And this proportion has inched upwards for successive cohorts of children.

It is against this backdrop that ComLink+, a scheme that is part of a national push to boost social mobility, has received a major upgrade in the form of a new payout and more cash incentives for its Progress Packages.

Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced during

his Budget speech on Feb 12

enhancements to these packages, which provide families with financial support if they take active steps to improve their lives.

This is less than two years after the first set of financial incentives – tied to pre-school enrolment and attendance – started in August 2024.

The other packages help these families to find a stable job, encourage savings towards the purchase of an HDB flat, and help them clear their debts.

The new measures reflect an acknowledgement that families with the fewest resources face multiple, complex and persistent challenges that are not easily overcome, even with incentives aimed at motivating specific behaviours.

By breaking goals into smaller milestones, the new measures aim to make progress more attainable, allowing families to work towards them step by step. This is presumably designed to draw more families to sign up for these packages.

For instance, from the third quarter of 2026, the new Partnership Payout rewards families just for continuing to work with their family coaches or case workers at the family service centres (FSCs). This payout provides $500 every quarter, with $200 in cash and $300 in Central Provident Fund top-ups.

What this essentially does is that it recognises families’ efforts to better their lives, instead of tying financial support solely to the achievement of certain targets. 

Families that enrol their children in pre-school will receive $150 for every quarter if their child has an attendance rate of at least 50 per cent to below 75 per cent.

Of this amount, $60 is paid in cash, while the remaining $90 goes to the child’s Child Development Account (CDA), which can be used to pay for pre-school fees, among other fees.

Previously, families received a $200 quarterly CDA top-up only if their child met a minimum attendance rate of 75 per cent.

Under the enhanced package, families whose children hit at least 75 per cent attendance will receive $250 per quarter – comprising $100 in cash and $150 to the CDA – $50 more than before.

PM Wong described the Progress Packages as “more than financial aid”.

He said during his Budget speech: “They are a form of social contract where family coaches work with the families to set clear goals – like securing a stable job, saving towards a home, or ensuring their children enrol in and attend pre-school regularly.

“When these milestones are achieved, the families receive additional payouts.”

Perhaps what may be the strongest draw for these families to sign up is that more of the payouts will be in cash. For families living from hand to mouth, nothing beats cash in hand to pay the bills and make ends meet. 

Ms Natalie Lim, director of the family, community and specialist division at Allkin Singapore, a social service agency, said the enhancements recognise that progress for families facing multiple challenges is often a “gradual and paced journey”.

Describing the changes as “practical”, she said: “Importantly, the Partnership Payouts emphasise that change happens through continued work with family coaches or FSC case workers. For families already doing so, it is an added bonus.”

Ms Lim said many low-income families often face daily pressures from multiple problems, such as mental health woes, unstable employment and caregiving stresses, making it hard for them to commit to programmes like the Progress Packages.

Take-up rates for the packages have also varied so far. As at September 2025, about two in three of the 4,100 children eligible for the Pre-School Package were enrolled in it.

But only about a quarter of the 8,600 families eligible for the Employment Package had signed up for it.

Preventing a permanent underclass

PM Wong had sketched the broad outlines of the ComLink+ scheme when it was first unveiled in 2023. Then, he said Singapore had made progress in reducing income inequality in the past decade, but there were early signs that social stratification was becoming more entrenched.

He said then: “More than just closing the income gap, we want to ensure that no family in Singapore gets trapped in a permanent underclass.”

On Feb 9, 2026, MOF released an occasional paper on social mobility trends in Singapore.

The paper showed that 25.3 per cent of children born between 1985 and 1989 to fathers in the lowest 20 per cent of income earners remained in that same income bracket as adults.

This is slightly higher than for earlier cohorts: 24.2 per cent for children born between 1978 and 1982, and 25.1 per cent for those born between 1982 and 1986.

Professor Irene Ng from the Department of Social Work and the Social Service Research Centre at the National University of Singapore said that it is a concern that the proportion of children who remain in the lowest quintile is creeping up for each cohort.

She added: “We should also be concerned (that) about a quarter of Singaporeans whose parents earned in the lowest quintile remained in that quintile. This reflects what mobility research calls the ‘sticky bottom’, where it is hard to enable upward mobility for the lowest-income households. 

“Their families have the fewest resources, and they face the greatest barriers to advance economically.”

Dr Mathew Mathews, a principal research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, pointed out that the income-rank correlation between the fathers’ and the children’s incomes has increased over successive cohorts of children.

The correlation suggests a stronger association between parental income and children’s income over time.

It rose from 0.22 for children born between 1978 and 1982, to 0.23 for those born in 1982 and 1986, to 0.24 for children born between 1985 and 1989.

Dr Mathews added that the two data points show “some persistence of trends which suggest more at the bottom will be stuck”, highlighting the need for more intervention. 

It is worth noting that the MOF data studied children born in the 1970s and 1980s, when the educational rat race was arguably less intense than in recent years.

How the current arms race in education will further affect social mobility remains to be seen.  

Dr Mathews said that social mobility gets harder as an economy matures, with advantages compounding over time as wealthier parents focus more on their children’s education and development, hence increasing their chances of success.

He added: “It is not enough to just go to university, but which university, exchange programme and internship. The different options provide different types of skills and capital which may be desirable for jobs associated with the upper quintiles.”

Giving children from poor families a fighting chance to move up the social ladder is more urgent than ever. And initiatives have to be continually refined for the highest chances of impact and success.