A City Of Six Million Where Fewer Than One Baby Is Born Per Woman

Photo: Damientan14 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (source)

Singapore's total fertility rate fell to 0.97 births per woman in 2024, according to the World Bank's 2024 World Development Indicators. That figure sits below one - a threshold that means, on average, each woman in the city-state is not replacing herself in the population. I had to read it twice. The number is not a projection or a worst-case scenario.

It is the measured rate for a year already past, and it captures a demographic quiet that is louder than most headlines.

The rate dropped further in 2025. The Singapore Department of Statistics, in a release updated on 3 June 2026, recorded a fertility rate of 0.87 births per woman. That is a decline of roughly one-tenth of a child per woman in a single year. When demographers talk about low fertility, they usually cite South Korea's 0.72 or Japan's long slide.

Singapore's 2025 figure puts it in the same conversation, and the speed of the fall is what caught my attention. A rate under 0.9 is not simply low. It is a signal that the population pyramid is being reshaped from the base.

Yet the total population of Singapore grew. The World Bank's data, updated on 8 October 2026, puts the 2025 population at 6,111,175 people. The Singapore Department of Statistics, with a release dated 25 September 2026, reports 6,208,523 people for 2026. That is an increase of about 97,000 people in a year.

The population growth rate for 2025 was 1.22 percent annually, per the World Bank's same October 2026 update. A country where women are having fewer than one child each, on average, added nearly a hundred thousand residents.

Those two facts - a fertility rate below one and a growing population - seem to contradict each other until you look at what "population growth" actually measures in a city-state like Singapore. The growth rate captures natural increase (births minus deaths) and net migration. With a fertility rate of 0.87, natural increase is barely positive, and in some years it turns negative.

The 1.22 percent growth in 2025 is almost entirely a migration story. The numbers do not hide this. They just require you to read the components, not only the headline total.

Life expectancy at birth offers the other half of the natural-increase equation. Singaporeans are living longer than almost anyone else on the planet. The World Bank's 2024 figure is 83.35 years. The World Health Organization's 2023 estimate, from its Global Health Observatory, is 83.6 years.

The two sources differ by a fraction of a year, which is normal when one uses a two-year average and the other uses a single-year life table. The point is the same: a newborn in Singapore can expect to live into their mid-eighties. That longevity, combined with very few births, produces a population that ages rapidly unless migration offsets it.

The Fertility Number And What Sits Behind It

The World Bank's total fertility rate for Singapore in 2024 was 0.97 births per woman. The figure is an age-standardised measure. It estimates the number of children a woman would have if she experienced the age-specific fertility rates of that year throughout her childbearing years. It is not a count of actual completed family size. It is a snapshot of the current pace of births.

When the rate drops below 1.0, it means the current pace is not enough to replace the existing population, even before accounting for mortality.

The Singapore Department of Statistics reported a rate of 0.87 for 2025. That is the lowest figure in the country's recorded history. The drop from 0.97 to 0.87 in one year is steep - a decline of about 10 percent. Fertility rates do not usually move that fast without a shock.

The 2025 data was released on 3 June 2026, so it reflects a full year of registration data. I cannot say from the dossier alone what caused the drop. The data tells me the rate fell; it does not tell me why. Common explanations - cost of living, housing, career timing - are plausible stories, not measured causes in this dataset.

What the dossier does show is that consumer price inflation was low in 2025. The World Bank reports 0.903 percent annual inflation for Singapore that year. By 2026, the IMF's figure was 2.3 percent. So the year of the sharpest fertility drop was also a year of unusually low inflation. That correlation is suggestive but not causal.

It does, however, weaken the simple story that rising costs alone pushed births down in 2025. The relationship between prices and fertility is messier than a single-year correlation can capture.

A fertility rate of 0.87 means that for every 1,000 women of childbearing age, the expected number of births in a given year is about 870 - spread across all age groups. In a population of 6.1 million, that translates to a relatively small cohort of newborns each year.

The exact number of births would require the age structure of the female population, which the dossier does not provide. But the direction is clear. The base of the population pyramid is narrowing, and it is narrowing faster than it did even a year earlier.

The replacement-level fertility rate - the rate needed to keep a population stable without migration - is usually cited as 2.1 births per woman in developed countries. Singapore's 2024 rate of 0.97 is less than half of that. The 2025 rate of 0.87 is about 41 percent of replacement. That gap is not a forecast of immediate population decline because migration fills it.

But it is a measure of how much of the population's own momentum has been lost. A country at 0.87 is not replacing its citizens through births alone. It is relying on other people to arrive.

One statistical note matters here. The World Bank's fertility figure for 2024 and the Singapore Department of Statistics' figure for 2025 come from different sources and may use slightly different methodologies. The World Bank draws on UN Population Division estimates and national data. The Singapore department uses its own registration data.

The two are consistent in trend - both show a rate below one and falling - but the exact numbers should not be treated as perfectly comparable. The dossier gives me both, and I report both, with that caveat.

A Population That Grows While Its Birth Rate Shrinks

Singapore's total population reached 6,111,175 in 2025, according to the World Bank's October 2026 update. A year later, the Singapore Department of Statistics reported 6,208,523. That is an increase of 97,348 people. The annual growth rate in 2025 was 1.22 percent. For a high-income city-state with a fertility rate below one, that is a remarkably brisk pace.

It is faster than the global population growth rate, which Our World in Data puts at about 0.9 percent for 2023, the most recent year in the dossier's world figure.

The arithmetic is straightforward. Population change equals natural increase plus net migration. Natural increase is births minus deaths. With a fertility rate of 0.87, the number of births per year is low. Life expectancy of 83.35 years means the number of deaths, while also low by global standards, is not negligible in an ageing population.

The dossier does not give me the crude birth rate or the crude death rate for 2025, so I cannot calculate natural increase precisely. But I can infer that it is very small, and possibly negative in some years.

Net migration, then, is the engine of Singapore's population growth. The 1.22 percent annual growth rate implies a net inflow of roughly 74,000 people in 2025, assuming near-zero natural increase. That is a rough estimate - the dossier does not provide a migration figure, and I am deriving it from the total. But the direction is unmistakable.

Without migration, Singapore's population would be flat or shrinking. With migration, it grows at a pace that many European countries would envy.

This dynamic creates a demographic profile that is unusual. The citizen population is ageing and not replacing itself through births. The total population, which includes permanent residents and non-resident workers, is growing and remains relatively young at the median. The World Bank's 2024 World Development Indicators give Singapore's median age, but the dossier does not carry that exact number in its notes.

I cannot report it without the source. What I can say is that the combination of low fertility and migration-driven growth produces a population with two different ageing clocks ticking at once.

The urban population share is 100 percent, per the World Bank's 2025 data. Singapore is a city-state, so the figure is definitional rather than informative. Every resident lives in an area classified as urban. That fact matters for demographic comparisons because urbanisation is normally associated with lower fertility. In Singapore's case, the urban share is a constant, not a variable that explains the fertility trend.

The trend is driven by factors within an already fully urbanised society.

The population density implied by 6.2 million people on roughly 735 square kilometres of land is about 8,400 people per square kilometre. The dossier does not give the land area, so I treat that figure as a derived estimate, not a reported statistic. The point is that Singapore is one of the densest sovereign states on Earth.

Density interacts with housing policy, infrastructure and the cost of raising children. Those are the channels through which demography touches daily life, even if the dossier's numbers do not trace them directly.

One more thing about the growth figure. A 1.22 percent growth rate, compounded, doubles a population in about 57 years. Singapore is not on a path to 12 million people by 2082, because migration policy can and does change. The growth rate is a policy outcome, not a law of nature. The dossier shows the number for one year.

It does not show the policy levers behind it. That is the limit of what the data can say.

Life Expectancy And The Quiet Revolution In Survival

Life expectancy at birth in Singapore was 83.35 years in 2024, according to the World Bank. The WHO's 2023 estimate is 83.6 years. The two figures, from different years and methodologies, bracket the same reality. A child born in Singapore today can expect to live into their mid-eighties. That places Singapore among the top few countries in the world for longevity.

It is roughly on par with Japan, Switzerland and Spain - the usual leaders in life expectancy tables.

The infant mortality rate tells part of the story behind that longevity. The WHO reports 2.2044 deaths per 1,000 live births for Singapore in 2024. The World Bank's figure, rounded to one decimal place, is 2.2. An infant mortality rate of just over two per thousand is among the lowest in the world.

For comparison, the global average is around 27 per 1,000, and the rate in the United States is about 5.4. Singapore's rate is less than half of America's and a fraction of the global figure.

Low infant mortality is a powerful driver of life expectancy gains. When fewer children die in the first year of life, the average lifespan rises sharply. Singapore has achieved this through a combination of universal healthcare access, high-quality prenatal care, and a clean urban environment. The dossier does not break down the causes of infant death, so I cannot say which interventions matter most.

The outcome, however, is measured with precision and is remarkably good.

Adult mortality is also low, which is what pushes life expectancy into the mid-eighties. The dossier does not provide adult mortality rates or cause-of-death data. But the life expectancy figure itself implies that the survival curve is pushed far to the right. People are not only surviving infancy; they are surviving heart disease, stroke and cancer at rates that keep the average lifespan high.

Singapore's healthcare system, its high GDP per capita, and its public health policies all contribute, though the dossier's numbers do not isolate any one factor.

The gap between male and female life expectancy is not in the dossier. In most high-income countries, women live about four to six years longer than men. Singapore is likely similar, but I cannot confirm it from the sources I have. The total figure of 83.35 years is an average across both sexes.

That average masks a difference that matters for pension policy, healthcare planning and the experience of ageing in the city-state.

Longevity interacts with low fertility to produce an ageing population. The old-age dependency ratio - the number of people aged 65 and over per 100 working-age people - is not in the dossier. But the direction is implied by the two numbers I do have. When people live longer and fewer children are born, the proportion of the population that is elderly rises.

Singapore's demographic future is one in which a shrinking base of young people supports a growing top of older people, unless migration changes the shape of the pyramid.

The WHO and World Bank figures on life expectancy differ by 0.25 years, which is trivial. The more interesting gap is between Singapore's life expectancy and its fertility rate. The country has pushed survival to the frontier of human possibility while simultaneously seeing births fall below the replacement rate.

That combination is not unique to Singapore - it describes much of East Asia - but Singapore's numbers are at the extreme end of both distributions. It is a demographic laboratory.

The City-state Where Urbanisation Is A Constant, Not A Cause

The World Bank's 2025 data reports that 100 percent of Singapore's population lives in urban areas. The figure is definitionally true. Singapore is a city-state with no rural hinterland. Every resident is classified as urban under the national statistical office's criteria. The number is not a measurement of urbanisation in the usual sense.

It is a reflection of the fact that the entire country is a single metropolitan area.

This matters for demographic comparisons because urbanisation is one of the strongest predictors of low fertility. Across countries, the total fertility rate falls as the share of the population living in cities rises. The relationship is well established in demography. But in Singapore's case, the urban share is a constant. It cannot explain changes in fertility over time.

The fertility decline from 0.97 to 0.87 happened within a population that was already 100 percent urban. Something else is driving the change.

The 100 percent figure also affects how Singapore appears in cross-national datasets. When researchers run regressions that include urbanisation as a variable, Singapore sits at the endpoint of the distribution. It is an outlier by construction. That does not invalidate the analysis, but it means Singapore's experience cannot be extrapolated to countries that are still urbanising.

The city-state is a case study in what happens when urbanisation is complete and fertility continues to fall anyway.

The density of Singapore's urban environment is not captured by the urban share figure. A 100 percent urban population could describe a sprawling low-rise city or a compact high-rise one. Singapore is the latter. The lived experience of density - housing estates, public transport, limited private space - is part of the context in which fertility decisions are made.

The dossier does not provide a density measure, so I note its absence. The urban share tells me where people live, not how they live.

One consequence of full urbanisation is that the infrastructure for child-rearing is shaped by urban planning. Childcare centres, schools, playgrounds and paediatric clinics are distributed across a dense grid. Access is not a problem of distance but of cost and capacity. The fertility rate suggests that even with physical access, something is inhibiting births. The urban share figure, by itself, cannot tell that story.

It is a starting point, not an explanation.

The dossier also lacks data on household size, housing type, or the proportion of multi-generational households. Those are the variables that would connect the urban form to fertility behaviour. Without them, I can only note that Singapore is fully urban and that its fertility rate is exceptionally low. The two facts coexist, but the causal chain between them is not in the numbers I have.

International comparisons are instructive. Hong Kong and Macau are also city-states with 100 percent urban populations and very low fertility. Monaco is another. The pattern suggests that extreme urban density, combined with high living costs and intense labour markets, pushes fertility below one. But the sample size is tiny, and the dossier does not provide the comparative data.

I raise the comparison as a pattern worth investigating, not as a finding I can source.

The Data Gap Between A Measurement And A Story

The dossier gives me precise numbers on population, fertility, life expectancy, infant mortality and urbanisation. It does not give me the reasons behind those numbers. That is a familiar boundary in demography. Vital statistics measure outcomes. They do not measure preferences, intentions, or the policy environment that shapes them. A fertility rate of 0.87 is a fact.

Why it is 0.87 is a question the data cannot answer on its own.

The popular story about Singapore's low fertility usually invokes the cost of living, the expense of housing, the demands of the education system, and the difficulty of work-life balance. Those are plausible hypotheses. The dossier contains one relevant number: consumer price inflation was 0.903 percent in 2025, per the World Bank, and 2.3 percent in 2026, per the IMF.

The low-inflation year coincided with the sharpest fertility drop. That does not fit the simple cost-of-living story. If anything, it suggests the relationship is more complicated.

What the dossier does allow me to do is describe the demographic arithmetic. A fertility rate below one means the population is not replacing itself through births. Life expectancy above 83 means the elderly population is growing. Migration of roughly 74,000 people a year keeps the total population rising. Infant mortality of 2.2 per 1,000 means nearly every child born survives.

Those four numbers together describe a society that is simultaneously very good at keeping people alive and very reluctant, on average, to have children.

The median age of the population is not in the dossier's notes, though the World Bank's indicators include it. I cannot report it without the source. Its absence is a gap in the picture. Median age would tell me how far the ageing process has already advanced.

A median age above 40, which is plausible for Singapore, would mean that half the population is middle-aged or older. That has implications for labour supply, healthcare demand and the political economy of family policy.

The dossier also does not break down the population by citizenship status. The total population figure of 6.2 million includes citizens, permanent residents and non-resident workers. The fertility rate applies to the resident population, which is smaller than the total. The distinction matters because a fertility rate of 0.87 among residents, combined with an inflow of non-resident workers, produces the population growth the data shows.

The two groups are on different demographic trajectories.

I am left with a set of measurements that describe a demographic regime. The regime is characterised by very low fertility, very high longevity, near-zero infant mortality, and population growth driven by migration. The measurements are precise and sourced. The explanations are not. That is not a failure of the dossier. It is the nature of demographic data. The numbers tell you what is happening.

They do not tell you why. The gap between the measurement and the story is where the interesting questions live.

The Takeaway The Data Supports

The dossier gives me a city-state of 6.2 million people where the average woman has fewer than one child, where a newborn can expect to live past 83, and where the population grows anyway because people arrive. The numbers are precise. The fertility rate of 0.87 in 2025 is the lowest on record.

The life expectancy of 83.35 years is among the highest in the world. The infant mortality rate of 2.2 per 1,000 is a public-health triumph. The population growth of 1.22 percent is a policy choice.

Those four facts do not resolve into a single story. They describe a tension. A society that is exceptionally good at keeping people alive is not producing enough people to sustain itself without migration. The tension is not a crisis in the data - the data is calm, precise, almost indifferent. It is a tension in what the data implies about the future.

A fertility rate below one, if sustained, means the citizen population will shrink. Life expectancy above 83 means the elderly will be a growing share of those who remain. Migration can offset the numbers, but it changes the composition.

I think the most honest thing to say is that Singapore's vital statistics describe a demographic experiment without a control group. No other country has exactly this combination of density, wealth, longevity, low fertility and migration dependency. The data tells me what is happening with unusual clarity. It does not tell me what happens next. That depends on choices the numbers cannot predict.