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I ?
FAIR
STARTING
NE?
Upperm22%
UP-1S k P
-
stay*
Down lstep
i-m r c
26%
Down2 steps
22%
Up 2 steps
28%
UP 1 *P
23%
Downlstep
27%
Bottom
(Youth whose parents are in bottom
25 per cent of incomegroup)
UPS*
--.
Up
2 steps
-Un 1sten
Source: The Straits Times O Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
2 SMU
School system,
income gap
are l e v factors
sure of income inequality between 0 and
1, has risen from 0.43 in 2000 to 0.452
last year, in spite of government transless mobile than Scandinavian countries fers.
like Sweden and Denmark, which typicalThe gap in earnings between the highly score below 0.3. Hong Kong, in a study est -earning and lowest -earning housereleased last year, registered Q.4.
holds has grown. In 2000, the average inMeanwhile, parental income and edu- come of the top 20 per cent of households
cation affect chddren's educational aspira- was 10.1 times that of the bottom 20 per
tions as well as how long they stay in cent of households. By last year, it had
school, according to a study by NTU's Dr grown to 12.9 times.
Ho which was published last year.
The widening income gap could make
Among other things, the assistant pro- it harder for poorer families to keep up
fessor founq that every additional year of when it comes to investing in their chilschooling by parents raised their chil- dren's education. And this expenditure is
dren's educational aspiration by about 72 sizeable in Singapore.
days.
According to the 2007/2008 HouseIf a parent earns an additional $1,000 hold Expenditure Survey, households
monthly on top of his regular income, the spent about1$820million a year on cenchild stays in school for about 32 days tre- and home-based tuition, a 42 per
more. Fathers were also found to have a cent jump from 10 years ago.
greater influence than mothers on their
The same survey revealed that, on averchildren's education aspirations and at- age, the top 20 per cent of households by
t ainment.
income spent over five times more on priBut more research needs to be done on vate tuition and other educational coursthis subject, say academics.
es every month than the bottom quintile.
Dr Ng notes that, unlike their colIt's a bruising parental arms race to
leagues in the US, Europe or even Hong put their children ahead of the pack.
Kong, academics here do not have ready
Economist JamesVere, who studies soaccess to detailed socioeconomic data cial mobility at the University of Hong
that tracks the progress of individual farn- Kong, tells The Straits Times: "Wealthy
ily members in a consistent manner over families are willing to put a lot of resourctime.
es into securing advantages for their chilThis information also needs to be col- dren, and you can't really stop them.
lected from individuals spanning the en"The only thing we can really do is to
tire income spectrum to allow research- make sure we take care of the children in
ers to accurately estimate how easy it is the public (education)system."
for individuals born to specific income
But public education per se is not a
groups to move up or down to another in- panacea - the overall system itself makes
come group.
a bigger difference.
Only then would Singapore know for
A report by the Organisation for Ecosure if it is improving or sliding on the nomic Cooperation and Development
score of mobility.
(OECD) last year notes that the practice
of differentiating what students learn at
Dark clouds ahead?
an early stage - through streaming, for exYET even without clear figures, there are ample - tends to be associated with largwarning signs that increasing stratifica- er socioeconomic inequalities. It also
tends to come without gains in average
tion could occur.
For one thing, inequality - which inter- student performance.
The conclusion was similar to that of a
national researchers have observed to correlate with social immobility - has been Finnish study. It found intergenerational
income mobility improved by 23 per cent
trending upwards in the past decade.
Singapore's Gini coefficient, a mea- when the country delayed the age when
A matter of choice
YET for all the research that has been
done on mobility, academics agree that
there is no magic number or an ideal state
to aim for.
The levers of relative.mobility lie not
only in the country's education system
but also its employment, economic and
welfare structures. For example, how em-
ployers value someone who goes to university later in life could affect his or her
children's chances of success later on.
Professor Diane Reay from the University of Cambridge adds that how a society
distributes the fruits of economic development among employers, workers and other groups is also crucial. If they go disproportionately to the rich, they lower mobility.
Turning each of these levers involves
complex trade-offs. Singapore officials,
for example, have defended the liberalised education system on the basis of the
need to challenge the best and brightest,
those that should later lead the charge of
growing the economic pie for all.
While it's unlikely this approach will
be rolled back, the Finnish study raises
questions about what can be done to
make sure children who missed the first
cut are not hobbled for life.
Likewise, academics like Professor
MukuI Asher from the Lee Kuan Yew
School of Public Policy have warned that
Singapore's stringent, means-testing approach to handouts and its single-tier retirement saving structure are inadequate
and contribute to the inequality that may
hamper social mobility.
The state, however, has maintained it
cannot afford the generous transfers that
Scandinavian countries - which fare
much better on relative mobility - give
their people.
Yet, just as there are costs involved in
creating fairer opportunity structures, social immobility comes with its own costs.
Like it or not, Singaporeans may soon
have to rethink the kind of social barriers
they are willing to live with in exchange
for prosperity. And figure out jus\ how
much they are willing to pay to keep the
Singapore Dream alive for their children.
Htmhy@sphcon.%
Source: The Straits Times O Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Permission required for reproduction.