Singapore: Social Development, Housing and the Central Provident Fund

In the last two decades, the European welfare states have been criticised for failing to address problems of unemployment and poverty. It is also claimed that Western welfare statism is too expensive, and that it has harmed economic development (Feldstein, 1974; Mishra, 1984, 1990; Pierson, 1995; Buti, Franco & Pench, 1999). In many industrial countries, government programmes have been trimmed down or privatised. On the other hand, poverty and deprivation remains endemic in the developing countries of the Global South. The governments of these countries are not able to allocate sizable resources to the social services even though the need for government assistance is great. It is generally agreed that these countries cannot afford the comprehensive social services provided in the industrial nations. Attempts by some political leaders to expand the social services to meet the pressing social needs of the developing countries have not been very successful. East Asian nations such as Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan (the so-called ‘tiger economies’) lie between these two extremes. Although these countries were economically underdeveloped at the time of the Second World War, they experienced rapid economic development during the latter decades of the last century and today, their citizens enjoy high standards of living. The East-Asian countries are characterised by a high level of state intervention in social welfare and yet they have experienced rapid economic growth. Social policy in these countries has developed rather differently from that in either the Western welfare states or the developing nations of the Global South. Perhaps the most important feature of social welfare in these countries is that social policies have not been divorced from the larger economy as has been the case elsewhere. Social goals have been met by integrating social welfare with economic development. The social policies of these countries have attracted attention from several social policy scholars who believe that there is a distinctive East Asian model of social welfare (Goodman, White & Kwon, 1998). The existence of an East Asian welfare model challenges the theoretical parsimony of the three worlds of capitalism model (the liberal, conservative and social democratic) suggested by Esping-Andersen (1990) a decade ago. It also offers insights into the viability of a normative approach to social welfare known as developmentalism. As articulated by Midgley (1995, 1997), this approach urges the harmonisation of economic and social policy. Developmentalists believe that social welfare can best be promoted when governments implement macroeconomic policies that promote sustainable, people-centred economic development and, at the same time, formulate social policies that invest in people’s capabilities to participate effectively in the productive economy. It avoids the emphasis on unilateral income transfers in Western welfarist thinking and rejects the notion that the market alone can ensure prosperity for all. Since independence in 1965, Singapore has experienced an economic and social transformation. It Int J Soc Welfare 2001: 10: 276–283