Last Friday a Straits Times article said Singapore’s total fertility rate plunged to a seven-year low of 1.16 last year. It is well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Do you know that Singapore has the lowest fertility rate in the world? According to the 2017 World Factbook published by the Central Intelligence Agency, the four countries with the lowest total fertility rate in the world are namely Singapore (0.83), Macau (0.95), Taiwan (1.13) and Hong Kong (1.19). Our neighbour Malaysia obviously has much higher “productivity”. It occupies the 80th position in a list of 224 countries from high to low fertility. 6.9 million by 2030 is just a dream There is another Straits Times article on the same day with the title “Total population 5.64m, with number of citizens up 1% to 3.47m”. Singapore’s total population has increased 0.5 percent to reach 5.64 million in June this year. This is ......