The social protection system in Singapore is based around the compulsory retirement savings scheme, the Central Provident Fund (CPF), introduced in 1955 as the national funded pension scheme under the British colonial government. In 1968, three years after Singapore became independent from the Malaysian Federation, the government introduced legislation to allow citizens to use their CPF savings to purchase public housing. Against a backdrop of political and social turmoil, this decision to encourage mass home ownership was seen as an effective way of nation-building. Since then, the scheme has gradually evolved into a comprehensive social security savings system addressing not just retirement and home ownership, but also healthcare, family protection and asset enhancement. The CPF model is one of enforced savings and guided choice, and there is a strong national hostility to western-style welfarism in the form of cash hand-outs to the unemployed, disabled, elderly and children.
The report highlights some of the ways the CPF has made a contribution to home ownership, education, healthcare and poverty; it is, however, limited by the lack of publicly available data and evaluation reports on the CPF and more broadly on government programmes.
Beyond the CPF, Singapore provides social protection on a philanthropic basis, characterised by the ‘many helping hands’ philosophy. There is limited discretionary support for those Singaporeans who are unable to work through the Public Assistance Scheme. However, only about 3,000 Singaporeans received public assistance benefits in 2009. While retaining an anti-welfare philosophy, the government has recently introduced several small-scale social protection initiatives and shown an increasing receptiveness to think about how best to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century, including the impact of globalisation on stagnating real wages, rising inequalities, an aging population, social cohesion and migration.
