Bottom Fifth in Singapore Jacqueline Loh paints a numerical picture of the poor and cautions that without concerted interventions, many households could remain chronically poor Based on the most recent 2007/2008 household expenditure survey, which measures monthly income for all households rather than only employed households, the average monthly income of the bottom 20% of households is only $1,274. As the median is never more than the average, likely 12-14% of Singapore households live under the most conservative unofficial poverty line of $1,500. With 1.09m Singapore households in 2008, that’s more than 131,000 Singapore households living in deprived circumstances. As well, besides this large number living below the $1,500 threshold, the full bottom fifth of households manage on substantially less than the social inclusion level of income. The other characteristic of Singapore’s income distribution across quintiles is how the recent decade has seen a marked worsening for the poorest households. Singapore’s steadily increasing Gini coefficient belies that pattern as does the uneven income growth story across quintiles. Between 1997/98 and 2007/08, nominal monthly income for the bottom fifth actually declined at an annual rate of -0.3%. In sharp contrast, annual monthly income growth for the other quintiles ranged from 2.5% to 4.8% for the highest income quintile. In 1997, the average monthly household income of the top quintile was about 9 times that of the bottom quintile. By 2007, the highest earning quintile’s income was 14 times that of the bottom quintile. Should these growth patterns continue, by 2017 the highest quintile’s average monthly income will be about 23 times that of the lowest quintile group. This is a stark change over little more than 2 decades. https://centres.smu.edu.sg/lien/files/2013/10/SocialSpace2011-Bottom-Fifth-in-Singapore-Jacqueline-Loh.pdf
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 17:20:49 +0000
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