Growth and Inequality in Singapore

• Main Author: HO, Kong Weng
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
• Subjects: Asian Studies; Economics; Growth and Development
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1663; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/2662/viewcontent/GrowthInequalitySingapore_2013.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

While the strategy of openness had earned Singapore rapid economic growth, upward social mobility, and possibly decreasing inequality in the early years of development, the more recent years saw increasing inequality and with it an underlying possibly diminished upward intergenerational mobility due to skill-biased growth processes, skill-biased parental influence, liberalization in the education industry, and structural changes in the society which hurt the human capital accumulation of children in families under economic and intra-household stresses. In particular, the paternal influence on educational aspiration and attainment is more pronounced than the mother’s. Non-Chinese and youths from disrupted families are worse off in both educational aspirations and educational attainment.