MPs underscore need to keep social mobility alive on day 2 of Parliament

SINGAPORE - Sustaining social mobility in Singapore and ensuring access to opportunity remains fair was a key theme on the second day of the debate on the President’s Address.

Among the 18 MPs who spoke on Sept 23, several raised the need to tackle inequality and for Singapore to keep refining its meritocracy, in order to reach a “we first” society that puts the collective before self.

Ms Joan Pereira (Tanjong Pagar GRC) and Ms Mariam Jaafar (Sembawang GRC) said programmes like KidStart – which help children in lower-income homes – are commendable, but must go further in providing holistic support for families.

Ms Mariam, who chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee for Health, said support for vulnerable families is still too fragmented, and government programmes should track a child’s progress as they grow. For instance, an education programme for a ComLink+ family should follow a child from pre-school through secondary school, and include after-school care and enrichment programmes.

Ensuring the next generation is ready to brave the new uncertainties ahead – such as the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and the digital world – will require a mindset shift among parents, said Minister of State for Social and Family Development and for Home Affairs Goh Pei Ming.

This means resisting the urge to get children to study ahead of the school curriculum or to outdo their peers academically, but to instead give them a childhood rich with unstructured play and opportunities to learn from their own experiences, he said.

“This is the mindset change that we need: from tiger parents to bear parents,” he said, describing parents who nurture and defend their children, but who also give them the space to stumble, learn and become more resilient.

MPs also called for more to be done to help workers, whether they are lower-wage earners or professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs).

In his first speech as a labour MP, Dr Wan Rizal Wan Zakariah (Jalan Besar GRC) called for the $3,000 wage ceiling under the Progressive Wage Model to be raised, and for AI training to be extended to lower-wage workers so that they can also benefit from an AI economy.

He noted that there are workers reluctant to accept wage increases for fear of losing eligibility for Workfare or ComCare, and urged the Government to review existing schemes so that workers are not penalised for making progress.

Noting that inflation affects lower-income households the most, Mr Saktiandi Supaat (Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC) proposed an automatic cost-of-living adjustment mechanism for schemes such as ComCare and Silver Support, which would get activated when inflation in a basket of essential goods crosses a prescribed threshold.

Ms Gho Sze Kee (Mountbatten) said the segment made most vulnerable by AI disruption is PMETs, who form the core of Singapore’s middle class. This is a group that has felt the squeeze on many fronts for a long time, whether due to rising cost of living, job insecurity, or the need to care for both children and elderly parents, she said.

While a healthy society always has some degree of social mobility, with some people moving up and some moving down, Ms Goh said Singapore must guard against too many sliding down and the middle hollowing out, as this would undermine society’s stability.

“Our focus has always been to uplift those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, and rightly so... But it is our middle class that often bears the heaviest burden in the challenges ahead, it is this group that stands most exposed, and has the most to lose,” she said.

Ms Denise Phua (Jalan Besar GRC) said Singapore has built one of the most admired social safety nets in the world that is anchored on multiple points such as the Central Provident Fund, housing subsidies and SkillsFuture, but technologies like AI have led to faster job churn and sharper inequality risks.

The city state thus needs to update its safety net, including expanding protection for those most vulnerable to economic shifts, such as freelancers, gig economy workers and those in non-traditional employment. For the larger population, benefits such as healthcare and insurance should be made more portable, tied to the individual rather than the employer, she added.

Mr Shawn Loh (Jalan Besar GRC) said Singapore’s work to build a more inclusive society is far from complete, and the new challenge of this generation is wealth inequality.

He noted that within his constituency, there are residents struggling to afford a basic HDB rental flat. On the other hand, it also set the record for one of the most expensive resale flat transactions at over $1.5 million.

“It is no longer just about income inequality or the inequalities of starting points in life... we are already seeing early signs that wealth inequality is becoming worse,” he said. “If we don’t address this fast enough, it will threaten to divide society – we would be broken into a million pieces, and we can’t go back.”

He suggested using Singapore’s fiscal system to ensure that labour and effort exceeds the return on assets such as real estate investments, and for the city state’s asset tax system to become even more progressive.

In a rebuttal to an earlier speech by Mr Fadli Fawzi (Aljunied GRC), Ms Mariam said Singapore’s meritocracy is not perfect, but neither is it an ideology.

The WP MP had said on Sept 22 that meritocracy, when taken to an extreme, can promote the mistaken belief that those who succeed are entitled to their success as they have worked hard, while those who are left behind deserve to be left behind for not working hard enough.

In this way, meritocracy can become an ideological belief to justify and explain away inequality and the lot of those left behind. Such a belief can be corrosive to a “we first” society, he added.

Ms Mariam said meritocracy in Singapore is a principle of fairness, and that the truth is that its definition has been broadened and deepened through the years precisely to address the risks raised by Mr Fadli.

For instance, there are today multiple pathways to success that are recognised, whether one graduates from university, polytechnic or the Institute of Technical Education, she said.

The city state has also moved from equal treatment to equitable support, where those with less get more help, while policies now explicitly recognise unequal starting points, and lower-income families have more subsidies in housing, healthcare and education.

And many initiatives today bring together government, volunteers and employers to jointly uplift families, recognising that merit is not just an individual effort but is also something shaped by family, community and society, Ms Mariam added.

“Our work to strengthen our multiculturalism is a work in progress, and must continue to go on,” she said.

“A ‘we first’ society is not built by tearing down the ladders of opportunity – it is built by strengthening them, and adding rungs so no one is left behind.”