Singapore is scrambling to stabilize birth rates. Experts see lessons for the U.S.

Pedestrians cross a road in Singapore's Chinatown district. The country's leaders rolled out a sweeping new policy aimed at shoring up birth rates. Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

When Singapore's Prime Minister Lawrence Wong gave his annual address in late August, he said his government would invest vast new resources to tackle a national crisis: the dangerous decline in the island country's birth rate.

"We want to make a fundamental shift in how we support families," Wong said. "We will walk alongside parents throughout the journey of raising their children."

The package Wong unveiled offers the equivalent of roughly $55,000 per baby. The plan starts with a $7,000 cash payment at birth and is followed by annual payments and credits that continue until the child is 16 years old. According to Wong, the steps are needed to counter a looming demographic crisis that he said threatens "our ability to keep Singapore going."

Singapore, a much smaller nation with a population of just over 6 million, is different in many ways from the U.S. Birth rates have fallen much more rapidly. But Karen Guzzo, an expert on family development and demographic trends at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said many American couples who are weighing parenthood need this kind of help.

"I was reading through what Singapore is doing, and it's hard not to drool with envy," Guzzo said. "It [offers] investments in children and family for an extended period of time, and I think that's really important."

The urgency in Singapore to address falling birth rates grew earlier this year when the country's deputy prime minister, Gan Kim Yong, told Parliament that the nation's "total fertility rate" — a figure estimating the number of children each woman will choose to have in her lifetime — had plunged again.

In 2000, Singapore's total fertility rate matched the current rate of the U.S., which is roughly 1.6 children per woman. But in 2025, the rate slid to just 0.87 , according to government data. Singapore's leaders say that's so low, it could lead to a population collapse of more than 50% in a single generation.