S’pore’s record low gap between births, deaths poses demographic challenge

The gap between the number of births and deaths in Singapore has shrunk to its smallest in almost a century. The natural increase in the population – the difference between the number of births and deaths – is closely watched as Singapore’s population would shrink without immigration when deaths outnumber births. Signs of this are already emerging among the Chinese community here, which is the only ethnic group to record more deaths than births so far. Shannon Ang, an assistant professor of sociology at NTU, said one reason why there were more deaths than births among the Chinese in 2025 is that the Chinese have the lowest birth rate among the races. This is even as the crude birth rates fell for all races over the decades.

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