We should be grateful for the past and ensure that the choices we make now leave our children a stronger, more resilient nation.
Key points at a glance:
- Today’s Singaporeans have inherited a stable nation, but preservation alone cannot secure continued success in the coming decades.
- Declining fertility shows young families lack confidence under present housing and workplace pressures.
- Sustainable immigration requires genuine integration, family security and mutual commitment rather than pure economic utility.
- National reserves and institutions must be managed to preserve options for future generations.
- Fulfilling our responsibility to our children in Singapore requires active renewal and stewardship, so we pass on a flexible, dynamic society where they can take on the challenges of the future.
Singapore as a modern nation is just 61 years old, and that means most Singaporeans today were born into a prosperous, independent country. From our ancestors, we inherited a Singapore with established institutions, substantial reserves, modern infrastructure and a priceless reputation for stability.
We have maintained and added to that inheritance and continue to benefit from work and sacrifices that preceded us. While gratitude is important, it should also remind us to fulfil our responsibilities to our children in turn.
The preceding essays considered what citizens owe their country and what the state owes its citizens. Now we must consider the fact that an inheritance can be consumed, preserved or enlarged, because the next generation will receive one shaped by the decisions we make today.
Renewal Is Conservation
We cannot fulfil this obligation by leaving everything untouched. Infrastructure wears out, institutions develop weaknesses, and policies designed for earlier circumstances can become obstacles as conditions change. Each generation must decide what remains useful, what needs repair and what has run its course.
The measure of our stewardship is the capacity we leave behind. Our children will need fiscal room to respond to emergencies, institutions capable of sound judgement, and skills that remain useful in circumstances we cannot predict. They will also need dependable families, communities that share responsibilities, and the confidence to make difficult choices.
These strengths require sustained effort. Reserves need competent management. Public institutions need people willing to serve honestly, challenge poor decisions and accept accountability. Community life depends upon citizens who care for others and contribute without waiting for every obligation to become a government programme.
Renewal, therefore, is part of conservation. Raising our own children well forms part of a wider responsibility to the society they will inhabit. The condition of their schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods and public institutions will shape their opportunities and the burdens they carry.
In other words, we must consider those consequences when judging what serves us today, so that we hand over a country capable of sustaining itself. That includes physical infrastructure and financial resources, together with a social compact—an ethos that a nation’s people internalise and honour in practice.
Making Room for Families
Family formation brings this obligation into focus. Singapore’s fertility has remained below replacement level for decades; our preliminary resident Total Fertility Rate (TFR) fell to a new low of 0.87 in 2025.
It is certainly possible for a society to have small families with strong intergenerational bonds, just as another may have high fertility alongside instability, abandonment or weak parental investment. But what TFR does tell us is that new families have less confidence in their ability to thrive as a household, especially with more children.
That is a great concern that must be tackled by the horns, because each generation needs enough people willing and able to raise the next. Given Singapore’s material prosperity, do the demands of life here leave sufficient room for the responsibilities we expect of parents?
Consider housing. As we saw in the previous essay, the size, cost and design of homes affect the households people can form. Planning for smaller households requires us to consider whether our decisions accommodate that trend or help entrench it.
The same scrutiny belongs in the workplace. Employers depend upon people whose lives include children, elderly parents and other responsibilities. Arrangements that consistently make those duties harder to discharge impose costs beyond the organisation itself.
No single incentive will resolve these pressures, because enabling family formation requires attention across different institutions. A country concerned about its future must go beyond examining trends in isolation. It needs to address what the combined demands of life now mean for the people expected to raise its children.
A Unified Stake in Singapore
Immigration also forms part of Singapore’s response to low fertility and ageing. But it would be a terrible mistake to take this as carte blanche to treat citizens and immigrants as interchangeable economic units on a spreadsheet.
Population policy carries consequences for community life, trust and national identity that extend beyond its economic objectives. Singapore rightly sees that immigration must remain controlled. Integration must thus keep pace with entry and citizenship must retain its distinct rights and obligations. So far, it has recognised these requirements by moderating inflows and distinguishing citizens from Permanent Residents in public benefits.
That said, the people who come here must acquire a meaningful stake in the country. As former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has pointed out to new citizens, other countries have opened up immigration on a scale that overwhelmed integration efforts. It has strained social cohesion and provoked strong native backlash there, an outcome that Singapore cannot sustain.
Nationhood must be passed from one generation to the next. In a country with Singapore’s immigrant history, that inheritance rests on attachment, community, trust, values, participation and shared stories. Belonging grows through these commitments.
Thus, existing citizens also cannot demand assimilation while treating newcomers permanently as outsiders. If we expect newcomers to acquire a stake in Singapore, we must allow that stake to become real.
Some of what matters most doesn’t show up on a balance sheet right away. Social trust, public order, institutional integrity and confidence in the country can all fall even if financial assets remain intact for a time.
Our intergenerational obligation therefore goes far beyond that of fiscal prudence. It is to leave behind a Singapore in which future generations can imagine forming strong families and where citizens retain strong ownership over our national story. It must also be a Singapore where newcomers contribute proudly and robustly, without losing its sense of self.
Citizens need institutions worthy of their contribution. Institutions need citizens willing to contribute. Neither side can sustain this relationship alone.
Using Our Reserves Responsibly
Our financial reserves carry another part of the inheritance. They reflect accumulated public assets, fiscal discipline and investment stewardship across generations. The decision to draw on them must be indexed according to the returns that future generations will receive, not merely the benefits that would accrue to the people who are currently living today.
That means genuine investment should take precedence over periodic tax-and-spend profligacy. We must consider what remains after the expenditure, or after the decision to withhold it.
- Have we strengthened the country’s ability to meet its needs?
- Have we preserved enough room to respond when circumstances change?
- Have we passed costs forward merely to avoid an uncomfortable choice today?
Our children will inherit the consequences alongside the accounts.
What We Owe Our Children
Against all odds, our founding fathers transformed our vulnerabilities into success and security. Our responsibility today is to ensure that our success and security does not become an excuse for complacency, profligacy or insularity.
Our children must inherit a nation whose people remain capable of sustaining it, improving it and taking responsibility for those who will follow them. Some choices require restraint, others careful change. Each must be judged by what it leaves our successors able to do.
In practical terms, they should inherit homes in which they can imagine raising families, institutions they can trust, and communities in which they have a place. They should have the resources and freedom of action to confront their own difficulties, rather than spend their lives repairing damage we found convenient to ignore.
We cannot decide everything for them, but we can leave them better equipped to decide for themselves. To borrow a famous watchmaking slogan: We don’t own Singapore. We merely look after it for the next generation.
Harry Tan is a Singaporean law graduate from University College London. He writes on public policy, political economy and institutional development, and is the author of the Singapore Spotlight for the 2026 Legatum Prosperity Index.
