Category: Commentary

Hallway of a HDB flat in Singapore

“This is What Inequality Looks Like”: Almost two years later, what does action look like?

Posted on by guanyinmiao

“This is What Inequality Looks Like” (2018) by Teo You Yenn galvanised a national conversation on inequality and poverty, yet almost two years later – of no fault of the author – the extent to which the rhetoric has translated into sustainable action is less clear. While the government has introduced policy changes, community groups have started initiatives, and academics have taken greater research interest in these issues, the underlying assumption that Singapore should “lift the bottom, not cap the top” has gone unquestioned.

American dollar bill

“Reducing debt improves psychological functioning and changes decision-making in the poor”: The value of quasi-experimentation

Posted on by guanyinmiao

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – the second most cited scientific journal in the world – the study by Ong et al. (2019) examines the relationship between debt relief among low-income individuals and their psychological functioning and economic decision-making. In this vein, it is worthwhile to evaluate the value of quasi-experimentation, to consider how they define and operationalise key concepts, and to share the significance and implications of the findings on social services and policies in Singapore.

Silhouette of a man

“Multistressed families in Singapore: A focus on transnational families”: What does it mean to be “multistressed”?

Posted on by guanyinmiao

Broadly, the study by Chiu et al. (2019) makes two unsurprising but important findings: First, that multi-stressed families (or MF) – compared to the average Singaporean family – have lower levels of financial, human, and social capital to meet their needs; and second, that among these MF, transnational families have even more needs related to system barriers compared to their non-transnational counterparts. Even though these findings have useful implications for family interventions, it might also be productive to consider our definitions and understandings of “multi-stress”, to study MF who might not be receiving social services, and to evaluate the well-being of the youths across different environments.

Half-opened laptop

Sampling and construct validity: Singapore as the world’s “smartest” city?

Posted on by guanyinmiao

The news report that Singapore is the world’s “smartest” city (ST, Oct. 3) – based on the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) Smart City Index 2019, published by the IMD World Competitiveness Centre and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) – is useful for exploring the two concepts of sampling and construct validity. First, how did the IMD and SUTD team collect the survey data and to what extent are the samples representative of the 102 cities (including Singapore); and second, how did the team define and operationalise “smart” and to what extent are the survey questions and responses reflective of whether a city is truly “smart”?

A burning cigarette

Evaluating an HPB intervention to reduce youth smoking rates in Singapore

Posted on by guanyinmiao

Last week, the headline of an article from a Malaysia-based website screamed: “How Singapore cut youth smoking with this one weird trick”. And given growing public policy interest in nudges – the behavioural-psychology idea that changes to seemingly small details can have major impacts on people’s behaviour – the finding that Singapore’s Health Promotion Board (HPB) was able to cut smoking rates at juvenile detention centres by 30 percentage points was impressive.