During his National Day Rally speech, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced a new set of enhancements to childcare leave for parents with children under 12, the replacement of the Baby Bonus cash gift and Large Families Scheme with a new SG Child Support Package, and additional pre-school subsidies.
In particular, the SG Child Support Package heralds a new era of government generosity in the form of child cash transfers. The enhancements represent an increase of $13,000 to $42,000 in per-child government financial support, which is not a trivial sum relative to the base support level of $20,000 to $49,000 under previous schemes.
Tan Poh Lin is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, National University of Singapore.