Singapore is small by many standards.

Certainly very small in terms of population. We only have 5.6 million residents. Roughly a quarter of municipal Shanghai or less than 0.1% (0.073% in fact) of the global population. A mighty punching-above-their weight bunch of smart and hard-working people.

How is our (and every other country’s) GDP growth being determined?

Basically there are two factors:

1)     Working population growth – well, we all know how unproductive Singaporeans are in terms of “doing the deed” and producing more babies.

Less babies can either be compensated with foreign talents joining the workforce or a change in the participation rate (people who have not worked re-joining the workforce – see exhibit 1). Both are happening.

Labour Force Participation Rate is mysteriously not available for the age-group 70+ in 2018. It was 28% for 70-74 and 9.1% for 75+