While it may be true that some research has documented the importance of active fathering and the potential for a child’s father to influence a woman’s abortion decision, the Centre for Fathering and Dads for Life should be more circumspect when evaluating the effectiveness of their initiatives as well as the extent to which fathers may have contributed to the decrease in abortions since 2010 (ST, Mar. 8).
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.
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