Given its widely
recognized success, the Singapore public households could not afford to
buy their own flats or rent homes in the open market and occupied heavily
subsidized 1- and 2-room public rental flats under the Public Rental Scheme.
Through the HDB set up in 1960, housing is provided under the government’s
shelter for all policy. Over time, poor quality overcrowded housing and
temporary mass self-help housing in unimproved squatter settlements has been
progressively cleared and replaced by high-rise accommodations and improved
facilities in public housing estates and new towns. In the process, the public
housing sector has grown to become the predominant housing sector and stock of
affordable housing in Singapore. This has encouraged the formulation of
policies aimed at reducing the cost of housing and easing access to owner
occupation in public housing, even for the lower income residents.
As with Hong Kong,
there is no official poverty line in Singapore. There is little data on the
number in the ‘Left-Behind Class’. If going by the recent number of street
people picked up by the authorities, about 170-300 people in Singapore make the
streets their home every year. Many (50%) are old (60 and above years old) and
have no family, employment or skills. Others are abandoned by their own
families. In one report, the Singapore Department of Statistics has released a
figure of about 4 per cent of Singapore’s resident population (or 120,000)
living at or close to the poverty line in 1998 (The Straits Times, 31
May 2000). Income distribution as measured by the Gini coefficient was 0.481 in
2000. In the most recent population census (2000a), 12.6 per cent of households
(116,300 households) in Singapore earned less than S$1000 a month (average
household income was S$4943 per month). The lowest 10% of households excluding
those with no income earners had an average monthly income of S$459 in 2000
(average household size was 3.7) (Singapore Census of Population, 2001). The
unofficial national definition of poverty drawn from the income qualifying
criteria in various public assistance schemes seems to cover those surviving on
less than S$10 per person per day.
By contrast, there
are fewer homeless people in Singapore. The lowest income citizens are not
excluded from the housing system. Data from the public housing authority, the
Singapore Housing and Development Board (HDB), showed that as of Dec 2004,
37,823 households could not afford to buy their own flats or rent homes in the
open market and occupied heavily subsidized 1- and 2-room public rental flats
under the Public Rental Scheme. Through the HDB set up in 1960, housing is
provided under the government’s shelter for all policy. Over time, poor quality
overcrowded housing and temporary mass self-help housing in unimproved squatter
settlements has been progressively cleared and replaced by high-rise
accommodations and improved facilities in public housing estates and new towns.
In the process, the public housing sector has grown to become the predominant
housing sector and stock of affordable housing in Singapore. This has
encouraged the formulation of policies aimed at reducing the cost of housing
and easing access to owner occupation in public housing, even for the lower
income residents.
Singapore has the second highest income gap between the rich
and the poor, as indicated by the Gini coefficient, among the 38 countries with
very high human development, according to the 2009 United Nations Development
Report.
Singapore, according to the 2009 UN report, had a Gini
coefficient of 42.5, exceeded only by Hong Kong (43.4) among the countries with
very high human development.
As of March 2011,
World Bank have Singapore's
Gini Coefficient at
0.44 ~ that is very high for a developed economy.
http://www.pressrun.net/weblog/2010/07/gini-coefficient-income-gap-in-singapore-and-elsewhere.html
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/05/singapores_election
07isawesome @05:38
